PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, June 23 (AFP) - President George W. Bush on Wednesday promised increased funds for the battle against AIDS in the United States and added Vietnam to the list of countries that can receive emergency US help to counter the disease.
"We are going to provide 20 million dollars effective today to extend life-saving drugs to the men and women who are waiting," Bush said during a visit to Philadelphia.
"In our country, nearly a million of our fellow Americans have the virus and 40.000 more contract it each year," he added.
Vietnam will become the 15th country, and the first from Asia, on a list eligible for US emergency financial help in the battle against AIDS and HIV.
"We are putting a history of bitterness behind us with Vietnam," Bush said of the move to help the former war foe.
"I want the Vietnamese to hear that we are together to fight the disease and that they have a friend in America."
Bush launched a plan in 2002 that would spend 15 billion dollars over five years on countering AIDS.
Nine billion dollars is in an emergency fund devoted to Botswana, Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and now Vietnam.
Five billion dollars will go on bilateral projects with about 100 other countries and one billion dollars will be used to increase the US contribution to the United Nations fund for battling AIDS.
According to US administration officials, more than 130,000 people in Vietnam have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and the figure could hit one million by 2010.
"Vietnam's population is second in size only to Nigeria among the focus countries of the president's plan," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
"Its rate of infection among pregnant mothers has increased more than 10-fold in the last seven years. Without American action, Vietnamese society at large is predicted to suffer a further eight-fold increase in HIV-infections in just eight years -- from an estimated 130,000 in 2002 to one million by 2010," said Boucher.
"This rate of increase is even higher than that projected for such countries as India, Russia and China."
Bush has called on Congress to quickly unblock the 500 million dollars needed for the AIDS fund in 2005.
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