Associated Press - Wednesday December 12, 2001
Jim Abrams, Associated Press Writer

The funds, approved by voice vote Tuesday, are double what is budgeted for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, but House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., said the United States has a "responsibility to lead the world in confronting one of the most compelling humanitarian and moral challenges facing us today."

The Hyde bill, cosponsored by Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the committee, allows $750 million for an international AIDS trust fund and $485 million in bilateral aid, mainly through non-governmental organizations, for education, treatment and prevention programs.

It endorses the spending of $50 million for a pilot program to help developing countries obtain pharmaceuticals and antiviral therapies.

The United Nations estimates that 58 million people around the world are infected with HIV/AIDS and that 22 million have died, with 17 million of those deaths in sub-Saharan Africa.

It says that this year there will be 5 million new cases and 3 million more deaths.

"The AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria pandemics constitute a crisis of biblical proportions in Africa and put the very survival of the continent at stake," said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.

Dr. Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global Aids Alliance, welcomed the Hyde bill as a good framework for how money should be spent. He cautioned, though, that it "doesn't really mean much in terms of money" because the foreign aid spending bill working its way through Congress, which determines the actual budget, sets aside less than $500 million for bilateral AIDS programs.

House aides said they were confident that passage of the bill would encourage lawmakers drawing up the foreign aid bill to increase AIDS spending.

But Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., who heads the House Appropriations foreign aid panel, said he couldn't endorse the $750 million for the global trust fund, which is still in the formative stage.

The foreign aid bill includes $100 million for the fund, which the United Nations is organizing.

"More funds are possible, but I don't want anybody to have unrealistic expectations" for this year's budget, Kolbe said. The Senate has not acted on the AIDS package.

Zeitz said his group hoped that the House action would set the stage for the administration to back a $1 billion emergency spending bill to help fight AIDS.

The bill is H.R. 2069.

On the Net:

Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov

Global AIDS Alliance: http://www.globalaidsalliance.org/

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