WASHINGTON, Dec 1 (AFP) - Americans on Monday commemorated World AIDS Day with vigils to remember the dead and rallies to call on President George W. Bush to meet his pledge to spend 15 billion dollars battling the disease over the next five years.
Christian and Jewish clergy led a prayer service outside the Treasury Department in Washington, mourning victims of the disease and calling on Bush to deliver the money promised under the scheme and to offer greater debt relief for countries hardest-hit by AIDS.
The proposal, made by Bush in his annual address to Congress in January, called for three billion dollars to be spent in the first year.
But in his budget request, Bush only asked for two billion dollars, although Congress last week bumped up the figure to 2.4 billion dollars.
"We don't accept the excuse that we have to go slowly because of lack of infrastructure" in developing countries, Baptist lay minister Adam Taylor said.
"We challenge this administration to live up to their promises."
Secretary for Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson began a four-nation tour of Africa on Monday to determine how the money could be used to help halt the disease.
Thompson is leading an 80-strong delegation on a six-day visit to Zambia, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya, and has already signed a 2.5-million-dollar grant to Zambia to monitor prevention and care programs.
Vigils and rallies were held cities around the United States, including a ceremony at the National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
Former US president Bill Clinton, who has launched a foundation to help developing countries provide treatment to people with AIDS, urged countries to support the World Heath Organization's goal of providing life-prolonging drugs to three million sufferers within the next two years.
"Treatment not only helps in alleviating tremendous misery, it can bolster prevention measures, which ultimately rely on the willingness of people to be test for HIV. When there is hope of receiving medicine that can extend people's lives, there is every incentive to be tested," Clinton said in a statement.
While much of the attention focused on Africa, US officials also warned that AIDS continues to spread in the United States, where an estimated 900,000 people are infected with HIV.
In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the creation of a commission on HIV/AIDS -- a panel of 20 individuals who will serve as key policy advisors to his administration.
"We have more AIDS cases than LA, San Francisco, Miami and Washington DC all combined," Bloomberg said. "More than 100,000 New Yorkers are believed to be HIV positive and thousands more become infected every single year."
A top US health official, Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also warned that "we are far from winning our domestic fight against HIV."
"Some 40,000 Americans this year acquired an infection that is 100 percent preventable. Unfortunately, less than half of all US adults have ever been tested," she wrote in the Washington Post.
"CDC estimates that the majority of new HIV infections in this country are transmitted by people who remain unaware of their status," she said.
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