In recent years, a lot of money and effort has been put into trying to achieve universal access to HIV/AIDS treatments. Countries around the world want to provide antiretroviral treatment to 80% of HIV patients in 2010, but this goal has not yet been reached. Although the number of infected patients receiving treatment is on the increase, not even 50% of patients in sub-Saharan Africa are receiving it. Out of the roughly 6 700 000 patients in this region that need treatment, only about 2 925 000 are receiving it.
There are great challenges that the leaders of the world face in order to up the number of people that will have access to these drugs. These challenges include the need for a life-long commitment to take the ARV drugs and support the patients in their daily routine, enough staff to assist with the ill, including adequate infrastructure, an adequate supply chain of the medication, and increasing awareness around testing and treatment. All these factors, however, require financial resources and will power, and the target is being reached at a very slow rate.
“Focusing too heavily on treatment can also be problematic if it detracts too much from efforts to prevent new HIV infections, a scenario which would only add to the eventual treatment burden,” Avert.com notes. “Furthermore, unless treatment programs focus on the vital tasks of monitoring and retaining patients, many patients will eventually die from treatment failure.” The World Health Organization has set many targets with regard to ARV availability and access, but they have not been reached. The “3 by 5” initiative, aimed to treat three million people by 2005, and the “All by 10” initiative hoped to treat or at least make ARVs readily available to all, by 2010.
“Though massive strides have been made in scaling-up antiretroviral treatment, it is clear that far more progress is needed to achieve anything nearing universal access. There are many constraints on achieving such ambitious targets, with costs and financial resources being at the centre,” reports the website. It is estimated that to achieve universal treatment targets an investment of seven billion dollars will be required in 2010 for treatment and care alone. This is of the estimated 25 billion dollars needed to achieve all targets including prevention, care for orphans and vulnerable children, and other program support costs.

Wim Van Damme, from the Institute of Tropical Medicine, in Belgium, said, “AIDS poses a challenge for health systems that is fundamentally different from all of the other health problems ever faced. Transforming a deadly disease into a manageable chronic one turns millions of people into chronic patients, in need of life-long regular follow-up. This implies that present efforts and commitments will have to be continuously increased for many years to come”.