NEW YORK, April 11 (AFP) - Former US president Bill Clinton on Monday announced a plan to provide treatment for more than 60,000 AIDS-infected children in China and nine other countries, expanding a program already underway in Thailand and Brazil.
The William J. Clinton Foundation will donate 10 million dollars to provide AIDS-suppressing pediatric drugs to infected children in Asia, the Caribbean and Africa.
The money, which the foundation hopes will increase with donations from other donors, will also fund a new program to help AIDS sufferers in rural Africa, Clinton said.
"One in every six AIDS deaths each year is a child," Clinton said. "Yet children represent less than one of every 30 persons getting treatment in developing countries today. These children need hope."
The foundation expects to extend the anti-retroviral drugs treatment to at least 10,000 children in at least 10 countries, including China, the Dominican Republic, and the African nations of Lesotho, Rwanda and Tanzania this year.
The foundation will work with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and others to boost that figure to more than 60,000 children by the end of 2006.
AIDS-infected children in China are expected to begin receiving treatment in May, the foundation said.
According to the foundation, Cipla, an India-based pharmaceutical company, agreed to reduce the price of anti-retroviral treatment medicines for children by more than 50 percent. The medicines are normally up to five times as expensive as adult AIDS medicines.
Peter McDermott, the chief of HIV/AIDS programs at UNICEF, praised the project as "groundbreaking."
Clinton also announced the launch of a new program to provide AIDS care in rural Africa to people who have been overlooked in many programs to combat AIDS.
"There is a desperate clamor in rural areas for treatment," said Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.
The program targetting rural sufferers has already been launched in Rwanda and would extend to Mozambique and Tanzania later this year, Clinton said.
"Expanding AIDS treatment is an international priority; and as we pursue it, we must leave no one behind. Access to care for children and people living in rural communities has been severely limited," he said.
The 10-million-dollar allocation expands a program that has already begun aiding 15,000-25,000 AIDS-infected children, nearly half of them in Brazil and Thailand.
The Clinton Foundation said it was counting on contributions from national governments and international donors to expand the program's funding.
"Our efforts to accelerate access and treatment represent small, but crucial steps in meeting a big global responsibility," Clinton said.
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