UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

Chapter 6163Attitudes to AIDS inChina have changedgreatly. Here youngstudents in Bejing arelearning how to usecondoms.UNAIDS/K.HesseAfter a meeting in June 2005 with Wen, Piot was the fi rst UN official to address the powerfulCentral Party School of the Chinese Communist Party, which distributed his speech amongits membership. According to Plumley, UNAIDS now has “an extraordinarily privileged relationshipwith the Chinese government”, and “is well on its way to helping build provincialresponses to AIDS”.Further moves to expand access to antiretroviraltreatmentMore resources became available for antiretroviral treatment when, in March 2002, the Boardof Directors of the World Bank endorsed Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Programme for Africa(MAP) funding for antiretroviral procurement as part of comprehensive AIDS programming.Also in March, in an effort to assess the quality of HIV medicines, and after years of lobbyingby UNAIDS Secretariat, WHO published the first list of HIV medicines to meet WHO recommendedstandards: the Access to Quality HIV/AIDS Drugs and Diagnostics project. Inthe same month, WHO also published the first edition of the WHO treatment guidelinesfor resource-limited settings 21 that included simplified schemes for treatment and clinicaldiagnosis. They made the first mention of the “3 by 5” target – that is, the aim to treat threemillion people with antiretrovirals by the end of 2005.21WHO (2002). Scaling up Antiretroviral Therapy in Resource-limited Settings: Guidelines for a Public HealthApproach (1 st edition). Geneva, WHO.