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International agencies and national governments are failing to meet their goals to provide HIV/AIDS treatments in the developing world, according to a report Tuesday by the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition. 

"The rhetoric from public health officials is good, but the follow-through is abysmal," said Gregg Gonsalves, who coordinated the report, told the International Herald Tribune. "We are woefully behind in our targets."

Earlier this year, the United Nations and the Group of 8 nations set universal access to AIDS medicines as a goal for the year 2010, planning to have 9.8 million people in treatment by that time. But given current trends, the world will fall 5 million short of that goal, said the coalition, an international advocacy group. 

"The G8 and UN universal access pledge is in danger of becoming a slogan rather than a plan of action," said ITPC member Chris Collins, in a press release issued Thursday. "This World AIDS Day, everyone engaged in the response to AIDS has a decision to make. Will we launch a full mobilization or settle for incremental gains that fall millions of lives short?"

In a separate news conference, the New York Times reports that officials from the Global AIDS Alliance and the World Action Campaign underscored the same problem. "Despite new investment, the world is not on track to meet basic goals adopted earlier this year regarding access to AIDS prevention care and treatment."

According to the Times, researchers for the treatment preparedness coalition looked closely at six nations with high rates of HIV -- the Dominican Republic, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Russia and India. Progress in treating patients was disappointing in all of them. 

In India, only 5,595 children were given a diagnosis of HIV, even though experts estimate that 200,000 are infected. 

In Nigeria, fewer than 100,000 people were getting the antiretroviral drugs that combat AIDS, though the government had planned to have more than twice as many in treatment by the middle of this year. 

Collins told the Times that the number of people receiving drugs was "dwarfed by the number of people in need."
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