The gulf in AIDS care between rich and poor loomed wider as drugmakers unveiled sophisticated new products to fight the HIV virus that will be priced out of the reach of developing countries.
Delegates to the world's biggest AIDS conference on Spain's Catalan coast have heard good news on the steps to contain the epidemic in the West.
But it continues to spin out of control in many poor nations, where 95 percent of the infections lie.
A stream of new antiretroviral drugs in recent years means AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence but it continues to claim millions of lives in poor countries where expensive combination therapy is available to only a few.
As AIDS activists clamored for cheaper versions of these drugs for all, Western pharmaceutical companies held out glimpses of yet more sophisticated, and more expensive, treatments on Monday, the first day of the conference.
Tuesday promises to be another day of stark contrasts, with more news on novel drugs that block the HIV virus in different ways to existing therapies, offering hope to thousands in rich countries resistant to older treatments.
The most advanced of the new drugs, a so-called "fusion inhibitor" from Roche Holding AG of Switzerland and U.S. biotech firm Trimeris Inc, discussed on Monday, will be the most expensive AIDS drug on the market.
Activists angry at Roche's pricing and marketing policies staged a sit-in at the firm's exhibition stand.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the world's biggest producer of the medicines, was due to report progress on Tuesday on its new "integrase inhibitor," which is some three years behind Roche's in development.
But progress toward the holy grail of an effective vaccine against AIDS remains slow.
California-based biotech firm VaxGen Inc offered a ray of hope by announcing its preventive vaccine might be available by 2005, if trial results went well.
The company provided no new clinical data and AIDS charities cautioned that hopes for AIDS vaccines had been dashed in the past.
More than 20 million people have died from AIDS in the last two decades and the United Nations AIDS agency, UNAIDS, says 70 million more could perish in the next 20 years.
Today, Africa bears the greatest share of infections but experts fear Asia could soon overtake it as the continent hardest hit by the disease.
In one gesture sure to please AIDS campaigners, Brazil offered on Monday to share its cheaper, generic AIDS drugs and technology for making them with 10 of the poorest countries to try to close the treatment gap with rich nations.
(Xinhua News Agency July 9, 2002)
