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The first report card on the United Nation's 2-year-old commitment to defeat AIDS gives the world's countries generally low marks in their efforts to overcome ignorance about the disease and provide access to prevention and treatment measures, UN officials said. At the General Assembly's special session on AIDS in June 2001, UN members agreed that defeating AIDS would take commitment, resources and action. The $4.7 billion is five times the amount spent in 1996 but less than half the $10 billion required for an effective response in 2005 and one-third of what will be needed by 2007, [Peter Piot] said. In part because of inadequate funding, many countries will not meet basic goals like rapidly expanding AIDS prevention and care that were expected of them by 2005. One goal is to ensure that by 2005 at least 80 percent of pregnant women have access to information, counseling and treatment to prevent transmission of the AIDS virus. But such services remain virtually nonexistent in the countries that are worst affected by AIDS, according to the report card that Piot's agency issued here Monday

The first report card on the United Nations' two-year-old commitment to defeat AIDS gives the world's countries generally low marks in their efforts to overcome ignorance about the disease and provide access to prevention and treatment measures, UN officials said. At the General Assembly's special session on AIDS in June 2001, UN members agreed that defeating AIDS would take commitment, resources and action

The researcher worked in a laboratory that Singapore had created to study the West Nile virus and other diseases before SARS became epidemic earlier this year. The laboratory grew the SARS virus to provide materials for developing diagnostic tests. Because the Singapore government and the health organization's officials are deeply concerned about the possibility of SARS accidentally escaping from a laboratory, Singapore asked the health organization, a United Nations agency based in Geneva, to send an expert committee to investigate the circumstances of the researcher's case

The researcher worked in a laboratory that Singapore had created to study the West Nile virus and other diseases before SARS became epidemic earlier this year. The laboratory grew the SARS virus to provide materials for developing diagnostic tests

At the General Assembly's special session on AIDS in June 2001, UN members agreed that defeating AIDS would take commitment, resources and action. The declaration of commitment adopted in 2001 by 189 countries was intended to halt and reverse the AIDS pandemic by 2015. It was regarded as a turning point in the global response to AIDS and a recognition that the epidemic was a threat to the security of many countries. The report card found that 93 per cent of the 103 countries that responded have established comprehensive national HIV/ AIDS strategies, and 88 per cent have increased public awareness through the media, school-based AIDS education and peer education programs

[Jim Kim] said that the World Health Organization would work with Unaids as well as with governments and private organizations to provide countries with the technical expertise to deliver the drugs. The most optimistic projections from all existing antiretroviral programs are that they would reach 800,000 people in the Third World by 2005, Kim said. [Jong Wook Lee] has given Kim's team until Dec. 1, World AIDS Day, to develop standardized guidelines, including ways to help developing countries get quality antiretroviral medicines. The guidelines will also deal with simplified treatment regimens, laboratory testing for complications, and rapid training for the thousands of health workers. We hope to be working in all 34 countries by Dec. 1, Kim said. Of the 42 million HIV-infected people in sub-Saharan Africa, five to six million urgently need antiretroviral treatment because their illness has advanced to AIDS, the World Health Organization said. But [Peter Piot] of Unaids said that 99 percent of the HIV-positive people who need HIV treatment today in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to it

At the General Assembly's special session on AIDS in June 2001, United Nations members agreed that defeating AIDS would take commitment, resources and action. The declaration of commitment adopted in 2001 by 189 countries was intended to halt and reverse the AIDS pandemic by 2015. It was regarded as a turning point in the global response to AIDS and a recognition that the epidemic was a threat to the security of many countries. One goal is to ensure that by 2005 at least 80 percent of pregnant women have access to information, counseling and treatment to prevent transmission of H.I.V., which causes AIDS. But such services remain virtually nonexistent in the countries that are most affected by AIDS, according to the report card that Dr. [Peter Piot]'s agency issued

One AIDS expert said that AIDS researchers had been discussing such an idea for two years. The health agency's goal is a good one, the expert said, but is unlikely to be met because 'we lost two years from inaction.' Still, the expert said, 'we have to get on track, and even if we reach one to two million, that would be a huge success.' The plan comes two months after [Jong Wook Lee] became director-general of WHO, which was criticized for its slow response to the early years of the AIDS epidemic. After internal turmoil within the agency over its commitment to fighting the disease, the United Nations created a new agency, UNAIDS, under the direction of Dr. Peter Piot, to co- ordinate the global effort

The overwhelming majority of HIV infections are in sub-Saharan Africa, where women account for 58 percent of cases. The HIV virus, which causes AIDS, is spread mainly by heterosexual intercourse, and the disease is contributing to food shortages by reducing the number of agricultural workers and threatening economic collapse. Of the 42 million HIV-infected people, from five to six million urgently need treatment because their illness has advanced to AIDS. But 99 percent of the HIV-positive people who need HIV treatment today in sub- Saharan Africa do not have access to it, [Peter Piot] said

W.H.O. plans to adapt many of the rapid response skills it learned in controlling the SARS epidemic and in responding to health emergencies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Liberia, said Dr. Jong Wook Lee, the United Nations health agency's director general. Dr. Lee is expected to announce the plan at a United Nations General Assembly meeting on AIDS today and to ask countries to appeal to his agency for help. Of the 42 million H.I.V.-infected people in sub-Saharan Africa, five million to six million urgently need antiretroviral treatment because their illness has advanced to AIDS, W.H.O. says. But ''99 percent of the H.I.V.-positive people who need H.I.V. treatment today in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to it,'' said Dr. [Peter Piot] of Unaids. ''We will say, use this regimen for H.I.V. patients with tuberculosis, that regimen for H.I.V. patients without TB, and that is it for now,'' Dr. [Jim Kim] said. Such decisions are important, he said, because generic drug manufacturers want to know which drugs to produce and how much