DAKAR, Dec 3, 2008 (AFP) - Funding for the fight against HIV/AIDS may be hit by the current financial crisis, a World Bank economist told an international conference on the disease in Dakar Wednesday.
But there were other solutions for the challenges ahead, Rene Bonnel told the 15th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA)
"Historically, if we look at the 1973 oil crisis you find that there is a decline in the total official aid. So it will be very hard to avoid that phenomenon now," Bonnel said.
"At the same time it is important to realize that there are more funding sources that can be tapped," he added.
Countries such as China, South Korea and Japan, for example, had started giving humanitarian aid but had not yet been approached for HIV/AIDS funding.
Another option was to create more cost-efficient programmes in low-income countries that were better tailored to meet those countries' needs, he added.
The World Bank on Wednesday presented a new report, "The changing HIV/AIDS landscape" to the 5,000 delegates gathered at the Dakar conference.
Uganda's Elizabeth Lule, who is responsible for the World Bank's HIV/AIDS work in Africa, warned of "a very difficult, challenging period" ahead.
While workers in the field worked to fill financing gaps, other priorities were competing for donors' attention, she pointed out.
She listed world food shortages; conflicts in the Darfur region of Sudan and in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo; Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak; and continuing problems with drug-resistant tuberculosis in southern Africa.
"The needs for more resources within these competing priorities but also with the financial crisis are enormous," she said.
"I think one concern for this conference is: will the donors and will the African government be able to manage these competing priorities and sustain the response against HIV/AIDS?"
Sub-Saharan Africa is home to nearly 90 percent of all children living with HIV.
Two thirds of the global total of 32.9 million people with the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, live in sub-Saharan Africa and three quarters of all AIDS deaths occurred there last year.
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