BARCELONA, Spain  - Protesters stormed the stage and shouted down the U.S. health secretary on Tuesday at the world's biggest AIDS conference, demanding Washington do more to bridge a gulf in access to care between rich and poor.

Members of the AIDS activist group Act Up take the stage and heckle U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson during his address to delegates of the XIV International AIDS conference in Barcelona, Spain, Tuesday, July 9, 2002. The group were demanding more active U.S. government support in the fight against AIDS. (AP Photo/Denis Doyle)

Some 30 AIDS activists rushed forward as U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson got up to speak, while dozens more drowned out his words with chants and whistles.

The protesters accuse Washington of failing people with AIDS by not committing more money to a new international global fund against the disease. Thompson, shielded by bodyguards, delivered his speech unheard.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, an adviser on development to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said Thompson should not have been surprised at his reception.

"It is a reflection of the utter confusion within the United States government about what they are actually doing," he said, accusing President Bush's administration of lacking a plan to fight AIDS.

The week-long meeting, attended by 15,000 delegates, has highlighted the difference in prospects of those infected with the virus that causes AIDS in the rich West and in developing countries. The poorer group make up 95 percent of infections.

A stream of new antiretroviral drugs in recent years means AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence. But it continues to claim millions of lives in poor countries where expensive combination therapy is available to only a few.

The AIDS conference, in its second day, heard alarming new forecasts on the advance of the epidemic. One study said HIV infections among the young were set to soar by more than 70 percent by the end of the decade.

WOMEN'S AIDS CRISIS

Top U.N. AIDS official Peter Piot said high rates of AIDS among young African women would lead to a population imbalance that would take generations to overcome.

The World Health Organization held out hope to developing countries, saying three million HIV/AIDS sufferers in poor countries could receive life-saving drugs by 2005. It launched new guidelines aimed at making anti-AIDS drugs easier to administer in poor countries without health infrastructure.

The U.N.'s Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, created in 2001, aims to bridge the healthcare gap -- but has so far won commitments from governments of only $2.8 billion, against the $10 billion it needs each year.

In a text of his speech, Thompson said the United States was leading the world in its support for the fund by committing $500 million, but activists said $300 million was "stolen" from other health programs.

Sachs said he believed the United States should set aside $2.5 billion for the global fund in 2003 and $1 billion for bilateral programs to combat AIDS.

The global fund's new executive director, Richard Feachem, told delegates that existing pledges were a start but billions more dollars were needed.

"These commitments will double the current number of people receiving HAART (highly active antiretroviral therapy) in the developing world and in Africa HAART recipients will increase six-fold," he said. "This is nothing like enough."

The global fund will agree on detailed financial projections on revenue and spending at its third board meeting in October.

Currently, a mere 0.1 percent of the 28.5 million people infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa get modern drugs.

VACCINE CAUTION

Drug firms unveiled more progress in developing innovative AIDS therapies but anger over the cost of treatments prompted noisy protests by AIDS activists and the invasion of company stands at the conference exhibition.

Experts dampened speculation that the holy grail of an effective vaccine against AIDS could be less than five years away, warning that developing protection against the killer virus would be a long haul.

However, Robert Gallo, the U.S. scientist who co-discovered HIV, said treatment in the West was set to undergo a revolution, fueled by new drugs that stop the virus entering cells.

The first drug of this type, dubbed T-20, was presented at the conference on Monday by Swiss drug firm Roche Holding AG and U.S. biotech firm Trimeris Inc and could reach the market early next year.

Among pharmaceutical advances reported on Tuesday, the world's biggest producer of AIDS drugs, GlaxoSmithKline Plc, reported early progress in developing the first of another experimental class of drugs called integrase inhibitors.

Doctors and drug firms are also making advances in ever more complicated drug cocktails to hold HIV at bay, although there is still no sign of a permanent cure since "sleeping" reservoirs of virus will always remain in the body.

(Additional reporting by Adrian Croft and Patricia Reaney)

Copyright © 2002 Reuters Ltd

###