Chicago Tribune - December 2, 2002

Instead the fund, announced in 2001 by President Bush and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and officially launched a year later, already faces a financial crunch. An additional setback came last week, when Congress adjourned without acting on legislation that could have authorized as much as $4 billion for the fund over the next two years.

This campaign needs a boost, a push for more money and development of a clear, military-like strategy, by the White House before the president's planned tour of Africa in mid-January.

Promises, promises. Industrialized countries originally pledged $2.1 billion to the fund over two years. But so far only about $600 million in cash has materialized. Despite all the fingerpointing by activists about American stinginess, the biggest contribution, $275 million, has come from the U.S.

Kofi Annan has estimated that $7 billion to $10 billion over the next few years will be needed to combat the lethal trio of epidemics sweeping the Third World, particularly Africa.

Anticipating American weariness and wariness of giant foreign-aid programs that vacuum billions of dollars, the fund was created independent of the UN and its bureaucracy. It responds to grant requests by countries for such basic undertakings as netting treated with insecticide to prevent the spread of malaria. The fund just approved one of its first grants, to fight HIV and tuberculosis in Ghana.

There is agreement among the wealthy nations that the world faces an unprecedented health catastrophe. In October the U.S. National Intelligence Council reported that without a massive international response, the number of HIV infections worldwide could reach 100 million and overtake the resources not only of sub-Saharan African nations--where the disease is already rampant--but also China, Russia and India. An economic disaster of such magnitude is almost unimaginable.

For the U.S. and developed nations, moving to control such a disaster is as much a national security issue as it is a humanitarian effort. Most of those dying are young, those who are in the most productive sectors of society. A society that loses its most productive people runs the risk of widespread economic dislocation, which can feed demagoguery and extremism.

An emphasis from President Bush would go a long way toward reviving national and international interest in the global fund. There has to be a strategy for allocating and directing money, and for rallying U.S. allies, comparable to the military plans to fight terrorism worldwide.

"War" may be a hackneyed metaphor, but not in this case. The U.S. and the developed world face a threat from AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Unless they get together to formulate a commensurate response, without a doubt there will be hell to pay.

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