"The poor and rich are living together, with the poor dying and the rich with more wealth than they know what to do with," Sachs said, referring to current U.S. budget surplus.

"We could give $2.7 billion if we each just give up a movie and popcorn a year," he said.

Ochoro Otunnu, president of the Africa AIDS Initiative, echoed Sachs' concerns by calling for wealthier nations to forgive the debts of developing nations afflicted with AIDS, as well as to help them boost public health initiatives by reducing military expenditures.

Hanson said that the World Bank responded late to the crisis, and had not devoted all the funds needed to stop the crisis.

Dr. Jim Yong Kim, the director of the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at Harvard Medical School and executive director of Partners in Health, said his personal experiences demonstrated the degree to which the World Bank's unwillingness to contribute had hindered AIDS relief.

Kim's efforts to bring relief to the HIV-infected, who often suffer from multi-drug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis, were initially met with skepticism from officials at the WHO, who he said were under pressure by the World Bank to limit costs.

Though the WHO claimed that MDR tuberculosis infection was untreatable and that the costs would be forbiddingly high, Kim silenced opposition with an 85 percent cure rate in a shantytown in Lima, Peru, using less expensive generic drugs.

"Four directors of the WHO Global TB Program had pronounced a death sentence without knowing that generic drugs were available," Kim said.