Professional Football Player Teko Modise (Photo Courtesy Brothers for Life)

Johannesburg — THE Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has urged President Jacob Zuma to advocate universal access to HIV treatment, prevention and care when he meets other Group of 20 (G20) leaders in Canada later this month.

The AIDS lobby group sent a letter to Mr Zuma on Friday urging him, as president of the only African member of the G20, to speak for the entire region and other developing countries.

The organisation also wrote to US Vice-President Joe Biden requesting a meeting with him when he comes to SA for the World Cup. The meeting is intended to centre on concerns that the US is backing away from its commitments on HIV/AIDS.

The two letters, signed by TAC general secretary Vuyiseka Dubula, come at a time of reduced global funding for HIV.

The organisation said the US was turning away from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar), established in 2003 by former president George Bush, in favour of the new Global Health Initiative, which some claim has broadened the mandate of health intervention without expanding funding, thus resulting in less money for HIV.

US embassy spokeswoman Sharon Hudson-Dean said Biden's schedule had not yet been set, except for his attendance at the World Cup opening ceremony and the US-England match in Rustenburg on June 12.

Ms Dubula said that in July 2005, the Group of Eight had made a commitment to support universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care. This had created the momentum that led to a global commitment to universal access by this year, as endorsed by heads of state and government at the 60th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

A key target was that 80% of people who needed HIV treatment and care should get it, said Ms Dubula. Yet universal access remained a distant target, with only 4-million people globally (42% of those who need it) actually getting it. In SA, the TAC said only half of about 2-million people who needed treatment got it.

Ms Dubula dismissed arguments against continuing to fund HIV prevention, such as the claim that support for HIV programmes crowded out funding for other health intervention and millennium development goals.

"It is particularly concerning that, despite how far we are from meeting our targets for universal access, funders have already begun to backtrack on their commitments. Without expanded funding, programmes across Africa would be unable to continue initiating new patients on to treatment," she said.