TORONTO (AP) – As thousands of AIDS experts, activists and politicians streamed into Toronto yesterday for the world’s largest conference devoted to combating the disease, many were determined to speak for the world’s 2.3 million infected children who are often forgotten.

Although drugs exist to prevent a mother from transmitting the disease to her child at birth, many children, particularly in Africa, do not live to see their fifth birthday because of the viral scourge which has killed more than 25 million people in the last 25 years.

“It’s such an indictment of the international community and of multilateral agencies, I don’t know how they can hold their heads up,” said Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Lewis blamed drug companies and apathetic governments, noting that drugs are used successfully in the West to treat and prevent the disease from birth.

“Why is the life of a Western child worth so much more than the life of an African child?” he said. “We can begin saving lives tomorrow morning.”

These sensitive cultural issues, funding debates and hopeful new drug and scientific research will be on the table for some 24,000 delegates from 132 countries gathering for the 16th International AIDS Conference, which opens Sunday and runs through Friday.

Bill and Melinda Gates – flush with their US$30 billion (euro23.5 billion) commitment from Warren Buffet to fight such diseases as AIDS – and former US President Bill Clinton are among the high-profile names due to address the conference.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the first reported cases of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV. Since the beginning of the pandemic, nearly 65 million people worldwide have been infected with HIV and AIDS has killed more than 25 million people.

There are still an estimated 11,000 new HIV infections and 8,000 deaths every day, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 64 per cent of those infected worldwide live today.