Last Sunday, the International AIDS Conference opened in Bangkok, Thailand, with the cancellation of a summit for attending world leaders. There weren't any.

Exactly one head of state was in attendance in Thailand: Uganda's Yoweri Museveni. With all due respect, Pres. Museveni does not represent a constituency with the power to stem the AIDS pandemic. Nothing came close to representing, from the United States or anywhere else, the sort of political and economic will that will be necessary to even slow down the growth of a killer that is slowly decimating one continent and threatening a second.

In the United States and Europe, AIDS is largely under control, although not cured, with the advent of protease inhibitors and other expensive drug treatments.

But the situation in sub-Saharan Africa and in South and Southeast Asia is very different. There, transmission is primarily through heterosexual intercourse, and in many countries access to any public health infrastructure at all--let alone the expensive and rigorous drug treatments needed to combat AIDS--is farthest away from those populations who need it most. In countries like South Africa and Tanzania it's estimated that half or more of the people now alive will die of AIDS. Globally, some 40 million people are currently living with HIV; 20 million more have already died. This year, three million more will die, and another five million will become infected with the disease.

The result of such staggering numbers is a killer so widespread that it has implications for whole economies and for global security. Poor countries cannot develop, cannot increase their income when so much of their labor force is decimated. The resulting poverty and desperation becomes a breeding ground for violence and for religious fundamentalism and terror. A fraction of the money the United States is now pouring into subjugating Iraq could make a huge difference in the war on AIDS.

In the US, however, AIDS is simply not a political priority. George Bush's much-trumpeted $15 billion AIDS package for Africa, while representing a reversal from previous US attempts to shield drug company profits, was hopelessly inadequate and relied almost entirely on US-run agencies--and even that was never actually funded. John Kerry, should he be elected, promises somewhat better funding--but it is still the Senate, not the White House, that controls the purse strings for international aid and debt relief.

Kerry also promises to remove ideological considerations from AIDS funding--a thinly veiled reference to the Bush Administration's absurdist insistence on the teaching of abstinence in sex education and its refusal to fund the use or promotion or condoms.

Neither Bush nor Kerry begins to approach the scope of what's actually needed. A war that killed three million people a year would be treated as the highest of foreign policy priorities. Troops would be deployed, diplomatic missions would be the stuff of daily headlines. In this case, moreover, the loss of life is entirely preventable; what is needed is a massive mobilization of drugs and health care workers. In other words, political will, and money.

No such thing is being contemplated in Washington or London or Paris or any of the other places with the wealth to make it happen. Back in Bangkok last week, thousands of scientists, health care workers, and front line activists struggled with how to contain a disease that is ravaging a whole chunk of the world. But they did so without the two tools they need the most: money and political will. Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela are among the prominent political leaders who've attended these conferences in the past. Now's not the time to get complacent, or bored, or give up on AIDS. Millions of lives depend on our caring.