World is 'failing to halt spread of HIV/Aids'

The world is losing the fight to control HIV/Aids, despite improved access to drugs in developing countries, the White House's top adviser on AIDS warned yesterday.

Speaking at a global AIDS conference in Sydney yesterday, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US, warned that new infections were still hugely outpacing treatment.

"For every one person that you put in therapy, six get infected. So we're losing that game, the numbers game," Dr Fauci warned.

The good news was that male circumcision can cut the risk of infection by 60 per cent among men. But women are eight times more likely than men to contract HIV during unprotected sex and of more than 600,000 new infections in children each year, 90 per cent are from mother-to-child.