CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) - Dr. Peter Mugyenyi helped President George W. Bush’s widely praised U.S. AIDS fund treat millions of people and along the way his Ugandan clinic became the largest treatment center in Africa.

At 60, he was ready to retire, but he no longer considers that an option, saying that with funding for AIDS treatment threatened amid the global economic crisis, he is still needed on the continent most afflicted by the virus.

Mugyenyi, interviewed Tuesday at an international AIDS conference, said that without continued funding, Africa risks a return to the days of "wholesale carnage," when poor people died because they could not afford lifesaving anti-retroviral drugs.

Doctors Without Borders, blaming the global economic crisis and other factors, had said at the conference that a chronic shortage of drugs to treat AIDS in six African countries could cost thousands of lives. Eric Goemaere, medical coordinator in South Africa of Doctors Without Borders, added that in recent weeks, some clinics have stopped accepting new patients.

Mugyenyi said officials from USAID, the main American development agency, have told his clinic to stop enrolling new patients.