More than a life-threatening disease, ignorance is hazardous to one’s health.

And the failure of health authorities to inform the public about infections and to provide the needed medical interventions to stop their spread gave the government failing marks in the global health campaign.

As with any government initiative, the lack of funds is behind the government’s dismal record in containing epidemics.

With international funding for such campaigns running woefully short, it is hard-pressed to raise the money domestically.

Take the uphill battle against Acquired Immune Disease Syndrome caused by the Human Immuno-defficiency  virus.          

With a 50-percent increase in new HIV infections in the past 10 years and decreasing local and foreign funding for anti-AIDS programs, the country still has “a long way” to go to meet its sixth Millennium Development Goal —to halt and reverse the spread of the dreaded disease by 2015.

According to Teresita Marie Bagasao, the country coordinator of the United Nations Program on HIV-AIDS, the Philippines should “dramatically scale up its HIV-AIDS prevention efforts so it could fulfill its MDG commitment”.

“With decreasing external resources, the country needs to mobilize domestic resources to get ahead of the epidemic. The country also has to focus on where the disease is, as well as to do things faster, smarter and better based on evidence of what works,” Bagasao was quoted by a major broadsheet as saying.

AIDS  is a condition in which the body’s immune system is attacked, weakened, and disabled by HIV, ultimately leading to death. HIV is transmitted mainly through sex or blood transfusion.

Funding for anti-HIV-AIDS programs “needs to be four times (about P1.76 billion) more than the current level (about P440 million per year) to achieve universal goals,” she stressed.

“Eighty percent of resources for AIDS response is external, mainly from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. However, the current Global Fund grant will come to an end in November  2012. The program may start accepting new funding proposals by late 2013 or early 2014. This means the country’s resource gap will be even greater,” Bagasao pointed out.

The Philippines received  about $20.4 million (about P890 million) in grants from the Global Fund to boost its not so successful “Getting to Zero” campaign against HIV-AIDS.

Among the top recipients of Global Fund releases were Ethiopia ($560 million), India ($385 million) and Tanzania ($364 million), as well as Southeast Asian countries like Thailand ($174 million), Cambodia ($111 million), Indonesia ($85 million), and Vietnam ($27 million).

Made worse by the “underfunding, if not unfunding” of anti-HIV AIDS programs, current efforts by both the public and private sectors are not enough to reverse Department of Health estimates of a five-fold increase in new HIV infections in the next five years.

“If current efforts remain at the same level, there will be 30,000 to 45,000 cases of HIV in the country by 2015,” Bagasao warned.

Some 4,600 new infections were monitored last year by the DoH from an estimated 600 HIV cases in 2001.

“New HIV infections in the country, which have been expanding since 2009, are concentrated among men who have sex with men, people who inject drugs and sex workers,” said the UNAIDS official.   

She disclosed that “the vast majority of people living with HIV are based in three highly urbanized metropolitan areas: Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, and Metro Davao.”