The Hindu : Bush launches $15-b. plan to combat AIDS in Africa

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 29, 2003

International

International

Bush launches $15-b. plan to combat AIDS in Africa

Washington May 28. Citing ``a moral duty to act'' against the spread of AIDS, the U.S. President, George W. Bush, today launched a 15-billion-dollar emergency plan to fight the disease in Africa and the Caribbean.

``America will not look away. This great nation is stepping forward to help,'' Mr. Bush said in a ceremony at the U.S. State Department before signing legislation authorising the U.S. Government to spend the moneys over five years.

Mr. Bush also vowed to step up pressure on key allies to spend more when he attends the June 1-3 summit of the seven major industrialized nations plus Russia in France, said he would warn them that ``time is not on our side.''

``I will urge our European partners and Japan and Canada to join this great mission of rescue, to match their good intentions with real resources,'' said the President, who leaves later this week for Poland, Russia and then the G8.

European critics have long charged that the United States' international aid budget is stingy relative to the size of its economy.

The new measure allows the U.S. Government to spend three billion dollars a year through 2008 to provide treatment and preventive care to those suffering from the disease and those in danger of contracting the virus.

Up to one billion of that amount can be sent to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria created in 2002 and managed by the World Health Organisation. — AFP But activists were worried that the full $15 billion would never be approved and said even more money was needed to stop the disease's spread.

The five-year global AIDS bill aims to prevent 7 million new infections with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS; care for 10 million HIV sufferers and AIDS orphans; and provide treatment for 2 million, especially in 12 African and two Caribbean countries where HIV/AIDS is concentrated. ``In the face of preventable death and suffering, we have a moral duty to act, and we are acting,'' Mr. Bush said at the signing. He said the money would be used to buy and deliver medicine, train health workers, build and equip clinics, train child care workers to attend to AIDS orphans, conduct HIV testing and provide home care. — AP

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