Nearly 3 million people in developing countries are now receiving antiretroviral drugs to treat AIDS, a newspaper report said on Tuesday.
This treatment goal that health authorities had hoped to meet was achieved two years late, the Los Angeles Times said, quoting World Health Organization (WHO) officials.
About 1 million people received the life-saving drugs for the first time during 2007, according to the report.
The figures were provided by UNAIDS, the WHO and United Nations Children's Fund, the report said.
During the same period, however, an additional 2.5 million people were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, indicating that health agencies are not gaining ground on the deadly infections, said the report.
"We have to do better with prevention," Dr. Kevin De Cock, director of the WHO's HIV/AIDS department, was quoted as saying.
The new numbers mark the attainment of the goal set in the widely publicized "3 by 5" program, which sought to have 3 million people receiving treatment by 2005.
That target was "excessively aspirational," De Cock said.
"Reaching that target even two years late is quite a remarkable achievement," he said, adding that when the goal was set in 2003, fewer than half a million people were getting treatment.
Despite the improvements, an estimated 6.7 million additional people still need treatment. An additional 23 million are infected with HIV and will eventually need treatment, according to the latest WHO figures.
Source: Xinhua
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