UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that major pharmaceutical firms promised to invest more on researching treatments for the AIDS virus and diagnostic procedures for poorer regions.

The companies also agreed to invest more in prevention, including vaccines and pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis, Ban said in a statement issued after he met with top executives at pharmaceutical and diagnostic firms working on AIDS and HIV, the virus that causes it.

"We noted that despite the gains, the epidemic continues to outstrip our best efforts. Only one-third of those who need antiretroviral treatment in low-and middle-income countries are getting it," he said.

"Each day, for every two people who are placed on antiretroviral treatment, five more are infected. Collectively, we still have more work to do."

The senior executives Ban and other U.N. officials met with were from 17 companies, including Abbott Labs, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and other top industry players.

Ban said the companies agreed to "invest further in research and development of new HIV-related medicines adapted to resource-limited settings to be used safely in children, adolescents, adults and pregnant women" -- in other words, to try to make drugs available to people in poor environments.

"All participants agreed that increasing access to vaccines, diagnostics and medicines is essential in scaling up prevention and treatment efforts," Ban said.

One of the U.N. millennium development goals aimed at halving poverty by 2015 is to achieve universal access for HIV and AIDS treatment by 2010.

Some 33 million people were living with immunodeficiency virus infections in 2007, most of them in Africa, according to the latest U.N. reports on the AIDS epidemic. The disease has killed an estimated 25 million people since it was identified in the 1980s.-Reuters