The 29 June announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) that the much-heralded '3by5' initiative is "unlikely" to be achieved by the end of 2005, places even greater urgency on the need to scale up access to other care options that keep people with HIV alive while they wait for antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, says a press release from Aids Care Watch. The two UN agencies, who share responsibility for tackling the global pandemic, highlight progress during the past 18 months towards greater ARV access, and report that one million people with HIV/AIDS (PWHA) in poorer nations are now taking life-saving ARV drugs. They had hoped 3 million people would have access to the medicines by the end of 2005, but that now looks out of reach.