Asia’s rapidly growing AIDS crisis, the latest advances in lifesaving drugs and stalled efforts to get them to millions of people in need will dominate a global conference opening in Thailand on Sunday.

With a cure and vaccines still years away, prevention will be high on an agenda showcasing Thailand’s success against a disease threatening a region home to 60 percent of humanity, conference co-chairman Joep Lange said in an interview.

The July 11-16 International AIDS Conference, expected to draw a record 15,000 scientists, activists and people living with the disease, would also take a hard look at the pledges made at the last meeting in Barcelona two years ago, he said.

“I hope this conference will be about accountability, where all the statements and declarations are going to be closely looked at,” Lange told Reuters.

UNAIDS said this week that spending on AIDS had jumped 15-fold since 1996 to $4.7 billion last year, less than half of that needed for care and prevention in developing countries by 2005.

While the price of antiretroviral drugs in developing countries has fallen by more than 90 percent, only 440,000 of the six million people in the developing world in urgent need of treatment are getting drugs.

The Bangkok meeting would hear appeals for action and more money, he said, but poor health systems in hard-hit nations were a major barrier.

“There are countries in Africa that have grants to put people on treatment and not a single person has been put on treatment. If you have a public sector that is not functioning, you are not going to solve the problem by shoving money at the public sector,” Lange said.

The debate over generic versus brand-name drugs and the issues of patents and trade agreements are due to get a full airing. Thailand, a generic drugs producer, is under pressure not to give its rights away in free trade talks with Washington.

CALL FOR LEADERSHIP

Big drug makers will showcase their latest advances and significant progress is expected on microbicides, vaginal gels or creams that would give women more power to protect themselves against infection, Lange said.

But with no major news expected on a vaccine, a key theme will be boosting prevention against a disease infecting 38 million people worldwide, of whom roughly a fifth live in Asia.

Infection rates in Asia are low in percentage terms compared to sub-Saharan Africa, with less than one percent in India compared to 35 percent for some Africa nations. But huge populations in India and China - each home to more than one billion people - translate into staggering numbers if rising infection rates go unchecked.

“Asia is a big part of the global economy and if Asia gets larger numbers, the impact on the world will be much greater.”

A new pillar of the conference this year is a leadership program to encourage political, business and community leaders to take on a bigger role against the disease.

Lange noted that some African leaders had already shown the way, unlike their Asian counterparts, some of whom declined to attend a Thai-organized leaders’ summit on the sidelines of the meeting.

“It would have been an enormous statement if they had come.”

The conference has changed over the years from a mainly scientific gathering to a forum for political activism as well.

“There is a lot of blah, blah like everywhere where you have all these organizations together. But it serves a purpose. I actually think it’s good that it has changed in a way into a talk show or circus, because things do come out and have an impact.”

Host Thailand’s success in preventing a full-blown epidemic in the 1990s by targeting its notorious sex industry with a “100 percent” condom campaign would be studied closely, he said.

New infections in Thailand have dropped yearly to 19,000 in 2003 from a peak of 143,000 in 1991, but experts fear complacency and waning political commitment will lead to a resurgence.

Recent incidents of discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS in Thailand will highlight the struggle against fear and intolerance. But Lange did not expect any trouble for delegates in Bangkok, which he ranked safer than Barcelona where 900 conference goers were victims of petty crime in 2002.