July was a heady time not just for Make Poverty History marchers, but particularly for those campaigning to end the scourge of HIV/AIDS in Africa. Against all expectations the G8 countries actually made a concrete commitment, namely to secure universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS sufferers by 2010. But the hopes of 40 million HIV sufferers will be dashed if DfID now falls into line with international backtracking to bury this very challenging target. Almost on cue, the global establishment has risen to fuel the cynicism about its motivations characterised in The Constant Gardener.At the International Development Select Committee on 22 November, on which I sit, representatives from the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS pointedly refused to agree to any milestones towards this target. 2010 is a long way off. What, the committee wanted to know, was going to be achieved prior to then? If we were to have universal access by 2010, how much would be achieved by 2009, 2008 or 2007? Any business person talks about ""SMART"" targets that can be tracked against specific, measurable and achievable milestones. 2 million children currently live with HIV/AIDS, with only one in twenty receiving anti-retroviral therapy. Where is the detailed thinking behind the Gleneagles target, upon which all their lives depend? DfID's response to the select committee was disappointing. Global targets can be ""counter-productive"", according to the DfID official responsible for HIV/AIDS policy. Targets of course are not supposed to be convenient. They are supposed to galvanise action and focus energy on achievable outcomes in a way that would not happen without them. Another DfID official said it was more important for individual countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to be ambitious with their own targets, suggesting that these were somehow undermined by global targets. But what is the point of a Kenya or a Botswana having its own target for HIV/AIDS treatment if it doesn't have the resources or infrastructure to implement it? A global target is important because it forces the developed world to make sure such resources are available, thus making it possible for desperately poor countries to meet their own health objectives. Lurking behind this, I suspect, is the feeling held by many policy makers that ""prevention"" is more important than ""treatment"". Prevention is of course vital, and Africa needs to roll out the success that countries like Uganda have had in reducing infection. But as a representative from Medicins Sans Frontieres told the select committee, the very best way to prevent HIV/AIDS is to focus on treatment. Because the treatment regimens are so complex, with several pills having to be taken several times daily, any programme for improving take up of treatment requires a massive investment in community education about how the disease works and how it spreads. Widening access to treatment also gives people an incentive to be tested. This is the single best way to prevent more people catching the disease. No one should underestimate the huge challenge posed by the 2010 target. Dealing with HIV/AIDS in countries with very limited health infrastructures is extremely difficult. I have visited outreach programmes in Kibera, the Nairobi slum where much of The Constant Gardener was filmed. Health workers battle daily against the problems of malnutrition, which prevent anti-retroviral drugs working. How can you give an HIV positive child food, without which the treatment becomes toxic, when a mother will quite understandably take any food offered and share it out amongst the whole family? How do you prevent HIV positive mothers turning to prostitution as the only way to feed their families? Added to this are the enormous complications of a disease that doesn't just require twice daily medicines, but also continuous monitoring and testing. The truth is that the HIV/AIDS pandemic cannot be solved in isolation. Without a means to earn a living, without access to primary healthcare to deal with opportunistic infections, without basic education to understand how to prevent the spread of the disease, simple dispersal of drugs will not be enough. The Gleanagles 2010 target was undeniably ambitious. But wasn't that the point of Make Poverty History, that we should be ambitious in trying to do something about African poverty? In a climate where many of the Millennium Development Goals look as if they will not be met, it is even more important to find practical and tangible ways to make a difference. The Gleneagles commitment to universal access does exactly this. According to the WHO, nearly 10 times as many people died from AIDS last year as from the tsunami. The Copenhagen Consensus of leading economists said in 2004 that in terms of simple cost-benefit analysis tackling HIV/AIDS should be top of the world's priorities for developing countries. This is because the economic effects of wiping out an entire generation of Africans are so calamitous that unless the pandemic is tackled little other development can take place. Now is not the time for Sir Humphrey like mechanisms to water down commitments made to the world's poor by the G8 in Edinburgh. Of course Britain cannot act alone on this, as the Prime Minister said when tackled by David Cameron on this issue at PMQs on 22nd January. But we are co-chairing the UN steering group responsible for implementing the target, so have more influence than most. DfID deserves great credit for putting HIV/AIDS on the Gleneagles agenda. Now it must take a lead in turning rhetoric into reality. Following this article, which was published in December 2005, Jeremy Hunt launched a campaign for interim targets for the universal access target. In January 2006 he published an Early Day Motion which was signed by 261 members of parliament. David Cameron also asked two sets of questions to Tony Blair about interim targets at Prime Minister's Questions. Following the EDM, Jeremy Hunt secured a meeting with Secretary of State for International Development Hilary Benn who agreed to the principle of interim targets. The UK government then took the leading role in persuading the UN General Assembly Special Session on AIDS (31st May 2006) to change global policy to include interim targets for universal access. This was agreed and became part of the declaration published at the end of the Session.