Peter Piot urged leaders to treat the fight against AIDS with the same seriousness they handle security issues. In a speech at a U.N. conference Thursday, he sought a 'quantum leap in a commitment' because of huge funding gaps that remain.

The daylong conference noted some progress, including signs of success in hard-hit Africa and a vast increase worldwide in the number of people receiving AIDS counseling and testing.

Many countries also still seem capable of halting the spread of the disease over the next decade, but efforts to control it are failing in regions including Eastern Europe and Central America, Peter Piot, head of the U.N. campaign to combat AIDS, said Thursday.

"What we are faced with is multiple epidemics and that the epidemic is still expanding," Piot said. "We are actually still moving into the globalization of the AIDS epidemic."

Accelerating on Every Continent

The remarks were a rare case of a U.N. official admitting that at least one of the Millennium Development Goals -- a host of aspirations world leaders laid out in 2000 to be achieved by 2015 -- probably won't be met. World leaders frequently say that other goals on development, tackling poverty, and ensuring universal elementary education will be tough to meet.

The interim conference was held to review progress toward meeting targets set at a U.N. General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in 2001 to start tackling the crisis.

A few hours before Piot spoke, Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned the conference that the AIDS epidemic is accelerating on every continent. He noted that just 12 percent of the people who need antiretroviral therapies in poorer countries were getting them.

Saying the global fight against HIV/AIDS may be "the great challenge of our age," Annan called for more money and more vocal leadership. Efforts so far have not "matched the epidemic in scale," he said.

Huge Funding Gaps

Piot said some success was evident in Africa, citing declines in the number of new HIV infections among young people in the capitals of Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Malawi, Zambia and Uganda, where people are more educated and prevention programs have started.

But he said the US$8 billion (€6.54 billion) being spent this year to combat the disease must be doubled to between US$14 billion (€11.45 billion) to US$16 billion (€13.08 billion) annually.

Piot urged leaders to treat the fight against AIDS with the same seriousness they handle security issues. In a speech at the conference, he sought a "quantum leap in a commitment" because of huge funding gaps that remain.

Delegates at the conference were urged not only to provide more funding, but consistent funding so that people with the disease know that their treatment won't be cut off for lack of cash.

Piot said there is now a US$7-$8 billion (€5.72- €6.54 billion) shortfall in fighting AIDS.

'Rebuild the Political Momentum'

Delegates also discussed research into AIDS vaccines and microbicides, which are gels or creams that women could use to kill the HIV virus during sexual intercourse.

"The only possibility we have to stop the pandemic is to boost the research and development of vaccines and microbicides," said Humberto Costa, Brazil's health minister.

Gareth Thomas, a British delegate and parliamentarian, said it was realistic to think that a microbicide could be developed in five or six years, while a vaccine was 20 years away at best.

Thomas said he hoped the conference would be a way to "rebuild the political momentum" to get more money for aid and debt relief to poor countries grappling with AIDS.

General Assembly President Jean Ping called on participants -- including 36 ministers -- to make recommendations to a summit of world leaders in September that Annan has called which will focus on implementing the U.N. development goals.

Annan said halting the AIDS epidemic is a prerequisite for meeting all the other goals.

"Only if we meet this challenge can we succeed in our efforts to build a humane, healthy and equitable world," he said.