HEALTH: AIDS Fund Falls Short of Expectations

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Jul 17 2003 (IPS) - The European donors conference to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria produced less than half the expected aid package at its meeting in Paris Wednesday.

"This conference has closed with disappointing financial commitments from Europe," Hélène Rossert, director-general of AIDES, a French association to fight AIDS told IPS.

European Union member countries announced 460 million dollars for the fund. This falls far short of the billion dollars expected in European aid.

France and Germany were the major donors. French President Jacques Chirac announced a contribution of 165 million dollars yearly for the fund. Germany promised 110 millions dollars a year.

The conference of international donors in Paris followed the creation of the fund during the summit of the eight most industrialised countries (G8) in Genoa, Italy in 2001.

"This fund can be an interesting instrument of aid that combines the methods preferred by the U.S. government and those employed by Europe, and could reduce the clumsiness associated with more traditional organisations of international cooperation," Rossert said.

This "interesting instrument", however, still needs money to function. The fund will need seven billion dollars by 2007 to fight the three diseases effectively, according to official estimates.

Before the G8 summit at Evian in France last month, U.S. President George Bush promised 15 billion dollars over five years to combat AIDS. Up to a billion dollars a year was expected for this fund, according to official U.S. sources.

Executive director of the fund Richard Feachem says it has received pledges for 4.7 billion dollars, but actually received only 1.5 billion dollars – less than a fourth of its current needs.

This money has helped finance the first two phases of the fund’s programme, and paid for 150 projects in 92 countries. A third phase is due to begin in October. That needs another 1.6 billion, but the fund has no more than 40 percent of that sum.

"The fund needs another three billion dollars to pay for programmes planned until 2004," Feachem said at the conference this week.

"The Fund will go bankrupt in few months time," says Daniel Berman from Doctors without Borders. "What is Europe waiting for to increase its aid? What are the oil producing countries waiting for? And the member countries of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development?"

The failure of the donors to meet expectations stood out starkly in the face of a plea by former South African president Nelson Mandela at the second world conference on AIDS which took place in Paris earlier in the week.

Mandela urged the richest countries of the world to improve access to medicine and other forms of therapy to people with AIDS in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. About 5,000 medical and aid experts participated in the conference.

"Science has already provided the means to stop AIDS," Mandela said at the conference. "The problem is that these means cannot be applied where they are most needed."

AIDS has killed more than 26 million people since its outbreak 20 years ago, and continues to kill some 10,000 people per day, Mandela said. He pointed out that 90 percent of more than 24 million people with HIV and AIDS live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

"This global injustice is unacceptable," Mandela said. "The most important step now is to give developing countries access to treatment against AIDS."

The conference provided an opportunity to economists and other experts to encourage local treatments against the disease in countries such as Brazil and Thailand.

"New studies prove that such treatments are extremely efficient, both in economic and in social terms," Jean-Paul Moatti, co-author of a study on the economic impact of AIDS therapies in the countries of the South told IPS.

"AIDS kills especially young adults, precisely the human beings most needed in rural regions," Moatti said. "Without resolute action against AIDS, this could halve the gross domestic product of countries such as the C- te d’Ivoire, or increase rural poverty in South Africa."

Moatti said several international economists, including Nobel Prize winners Kenneth Arrow and Joseph Stiglitz, will launch an appeal for a revision of World Trade Organisation (WTO) provisions for AIDS therapies to facilitate access for Third World countries to new treatments.

"This appeal will be made public just before the WTO summit at Cancun in Mexico next September," he said.