The HIV/AIDS pandemic has entered a new phase, with a greater need than ever for international donors and developing countries to mobilize around common national strategies to better fight the disease, a new World Bank global HIV/AIDS strategy warned today.

The Banks says that while there has been an unprecedented outpouring of money, significant advances in treatment, accumulated understanding of how to provide prevention, treatment and care, efforts, along with growing political commitment to stop the spread of the disease, more people will become infected with HIV, and die from AIDS, in 2005 than in any previous year.

“The barriers that blunt our collective efforts to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS are a mixture of long-standing, as well as newly emerging, challenges,” says Paul Wolfowitz, World Bank President.  “National HIV/AIDS-Strategic plans are for the most part not well-devised with clear priorities; prevention, care, and treatment efforts are still nowhere near equal to slowing down, or stopping, the virus; and progress continues to be eroded by pitfalls in management and implementation.”

Launched on the eve of World AIDS Day, the World Bank’s new global plan will strengthen the Bank’s response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic at country, regional, and global levels, through no-interest lending, grants, analysis, technical support and policy dialogue.

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