Officials from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria say they fear they will not come close to the $17 billion target they set for their next donors’ meeting in September.

The other, more welcome, distraction has been the exciting results of a South African clinical trial in which a vaginal gel with an antiretroviral drug protected 40 percent of the women using it. This is the first good news about microbicides in decades of work. A gel women can use secretly has long been sought, since many men disdain condoms and many women want to get pregnant.

The Vienna Declaration is only the second time that the International AIDS Society has issued such a document. The last was the 2000 Durban Declaration, which reaffirmed that H.I.V. was the cause of AIDS. It was a response to the government of South Africa, the conference’s host, which at the time denied that the virus caused disease and refused to buy medicine for its citizens.

Outside of Africa, almost a third of all H.I.V. infections stem from drug injections.

The declaration contends that arresting drug users forces them into hiding, spreading the epidemic. It backs “science-based public health approaches" proved in clinical trials, which can include everything clean needle swaps, 12-step recovery programs and methadone.

Dr. Evan Wood, an AIDS policy expert at the University of British Columbia and the chief author, cited Portugal’s approach. According to a 2009 report by the libertarian Cato Institute, in the decade since Portugal legalized possession of up to 10 days’ worth of any drug, including cocaine and heroin, its AIDS rate dropped by half, overdose deaths fell, many citizens sought treatment, drug use among young people fell and drug tourism did not develop. The institute called the policy “a resounding success.”

The declaration is largely aimed at countries of the former Soviet Union. In Russia, for example, close to 1 percent of its adult population is infected.

Nonetheless, the country forbids all methadone-type treatments, and the national health plan offers only abrupt detoxification, which has a high failure rate. The most frequent victims — prisoners and people not living in their assigned residence areas — are the least likely to get AIDS drugs, and activists say markups vastly inflate the prices of medications bought cheaply by foreign donors.