The foe is AIDS, and the coming 12 months will tell if two years of progress against the disease -- cheaper drugs, stronger political commitment and more money -- will continue or if its momentum drains away.

2005 carries huge symbolic weight because the UNs World Health Organisation (WHO) has set years end as the goal for distributing anti-HIV drugs to three million poor, infected people.

The so-called Three by Five initiative is the rallying cry for saving countries, especially in Africa, whose adult population has been ravaged by

Antiretrovirals, while not a cure, provide a lifeline for parents and workers, saving children from the orphanage and maintaining the skills and energies needed to keep economies running.

But some frontline campaigners predict that the WHO will miss the three-million mark by a mile -- or else will have to massage the figures in order to get anywhere close to it.

A bad miss would have a catastrophic impact on the war against AIDS, seriously affecting faith in the ability to treat patients in the poorest countries, they say.

But if the target is reached through figures which are misleading, that may stoke complacency. It could also cause a rush of funds out of prevention and into treatment, prolonging the lives of infected adults but imperilling young people at the dawn of their sexual lives.

"You dont have to be a prophet to see that by December 31 2005 there wont be (lots of) patients on antiretrovirals," Annick Hamel, in charge of the antiretroviral access campaign at Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF - Doctors Without Borders) told AFP.

"Three by Five will be like Health For All in 2000, the kind of slogan that the WHO adores... the agency damages its credibility with media puffs like this."

On World AIDS Day on December 1, the WHO announced that 440,000 poor people were now on the precious anti-HIV drugs, an achievement helped by a plunge in the price of the medications in 2003 and 2004. Two years ago, the number was in the tens of thousands.

But, says, Hamel, the figure of 440,000 misleads the world into thinking that headway is being made against AIDS and that treatment alone, using sophisticated lifelong drugs designed for First-World settings, is the Big Answer.

"It includes 150,000 patients in Brazil, not in the poorest countries, especially in Africa, which are the most affected," she says. "Its almost pathetic."

Nine out of 10 people who need HIV-suppressing drugs are not receiving them, according to the UN agency UNAIDS. At this rate, "five to six million people will die of AIDS in the next two years," it warned in November.

Nearly 40 million people today are living with AIDS or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes it.

At the WHO, Jim Kim, director of the agencys AIDS department, remains optimistic, but admits that to reach the three million target by December 31, "every person involved in HIV treatment and care, every person in every organisation, is going to have to make absolutely extraordinary efforts."

New figures on the number of people getting the drugs will be unveiled on January 26, and Kim said "we have been very surprised at the rapidity of scaleup in many African countries. We are absolutely making progress here."

What is most encouraging, Kim said in an interview from Geneva, is that ingenious ways have been found, drawing on experience in Brazil and Haiti, to distribute the medication in poor countries.

Instead of using doctors -- a luxury in many parts of rural Africa -- the programme uses nurses and health workers to advise patients.

And instead of using expensive lab tests on blood samples to test for levels of virus and immune cells, personnel use "syndromic techniques" to see whether the medication works or not -- in other words, to ask the patient if he or she feels better and carry out simple checks to try to verify any side effects, said Kim.

As for money, global funding for AIDS rose from roughly 2.1 billion dollars to an estimated 6.1 billion in 2004.

The main vehicle for this, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, says it needs 2.3 billion dollars to carry out its work in 2005, but as of mid-December had received pledges of just 932 million.

That enormous gap presages a worrying return to the funding brinkmanship of past years, which was only eased by the launch in January 2003 of President George W. Bushs 15-billion-dollar, five-year plan to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean.

Financial uncertainty can only worsen in the light of the December 26 disaster.

Donor countries around the world are digging deep into their aid budgets to help tsunami victims -- and this means there will be precious little extra for meeting shortfalls on AIDS funding.