HEALTH-U.S.: Congress Skirmishes Over Bush AIDS Programme

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 10 2003 (IPS) - Two weeks after announcing his five-year, 15-billion-dollar ”emergency plan for AIDS relief”, U.S. President George W. Bush is under fire by activists for pressing Congress to limit U.S. money for the disease next year and insisting that the vast majority of it be spent on bilateral programmes instead of a United Nations’ fund.

While most activists warmly welcomed Bush’s commitment to triple spending on the anti-AIDS campaign in 12 African and two Caribbean nations, they have expressed great concern that only a fraction of the new funding will go to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, a two-year-old multilateral initiative that is fast running out of money due to high demand and disappointing contributions.

At the same time, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, Tommy Thompson, has agreed to chair the Global Fund, a hopeful sign, according to some activists, that Washington may be prepared to increase its contribution in coming years.

The latest controversy revolves around the ‘U.S. Leadership to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria Act’, which is due to be taken up by the Senate foreign relations committee next week. The bill passed the Senate unanimously in November, only to die in the House of Representatives when the right-wing Republican leadership refused to send it to the floor.

As passed in the upper chamber, the bill required the administration to spend 2.5 billion dollars on the global fight against the three diseases in fiscal year 2004, of which no less than 1.25 billion dollars was earmarked for the multilateral Global Fund..

Its chief sponsors, the new Republican Majority Leader, Bill Frist, and Democratic Sen. John Kerry, want the new Congress to pass the same bill as soon as possible.

But the White House wants the total amount of money in the bill to be reduced from 2.5 billion dollars to 2.0 billion dollars, in accordance with the timetable for increasing U.S. aid to fight AIDS and other global scourges under the plan released two weeks ago. In addition, the White House wants to reduce or eliminate altogether the 1.25-billion-dollar earmark for the Global Fund.

In negotiations with the administration, Frist is reportedly holding out for the 2.5 billion dollars. But congressional sources said that the Tennessee senator, who has very close ties to Bush and is believed to be interested in a presidential run in 2008, has shown some willingness to reduce the amount earmarked for the Global Fund, possibly to around 800 million dollars.

AIDS activist groups, particularly those who have championed the Global Fund and are worried that it is running out of money, want the Senate sponsors to hold firm on both counts and insist that the 2.5-billion-dollar total should be the absolute minimum Washington provides next year.

”The President used his state of the union address to call for ’emergency’ action to stop AIDS in Africa, yet now he is obstructing congressional efforts to move resources quickly to programmes on the ground in Africa that are delivering treatment now,” said Paul Zeitz, director of the Global AIDS Alliance here.

”We need to fully support the Global Fund this year with funding no less than the Senate approved last year. It is tragic that the Fund is now out of the resources it needs to fund the next round of proposals.”

The Global Fund has estimated it needs close to seven billion dollars over the next two years to keep pace with both the spread of the three diseases and the demand by governments and non-governmental groups that submit proposed projects for funding. Last Friday, the Fund awarded some 800 million dollars for new projects.

The Fund was originally promoted as the main international mechanism for fighting the AIDS pandemic and as a means by which donors could pool their resources to support a single coherent strategy and reduce the bureaucratic burden on poor countries that normally have to report to many different donor agencies.

Washington has provided only 500 million dollars to the Fund so far, a level of support that has discouraged other donors from contributing much more. As a result, the Fund has received only a little over two billion dollars in contributions so far and now faces virtual bankruptcy in the absence of major new infusions from the United States, Europe, Japan, and other donors.

”Substantial refinancing will be needed if we are to continue with our work,” Richard Feachem, the Fund’s executive director, told the Financial Times this week.

Activists are trying hard to persuade European nations, whose combined contributions so far have significantly exceeded Washington’s, to provide substantially more than Bush’s commitment of only one billion dollars for the fund over the next five years.

”Silence from Europe at this moment would be deadly for the Global Fund,” according to Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a U.N. consultant on AIDS.

”If the U.S. is the only country to put up large new sums for the war against AIDS, then it will be a U.S. programme,” he added, a concern shared by other activists who also worry that Thompson’s chairmanship may add to that notion.

Sachs called on Europe to contribute at least three billion dollars a year and Japan and others to ante up at least another one billion dollars.

Activists say that, by retaining the 1.25-billion-dollar earmark from last year’s bill, as well as the 2.5-billion-dollar total, in the new version next week, the Senate committee could provide an important signal to other donors that Washington will increase its commitment to the Global Fund beyond what Bush has already promised, as well as to the larger fight against AIDS.