Inter Press Service - December 1, 2003
Jim Lobe

Marking World AIDS day Monday, the contenders also vowed to deepen debt relief to the world's poorest countries most threatened by the killer diseases.

The 30 billion dollars they proposed would more than double planned spending by Republican President George W. Bush, who has promoted an "emergency" package to disburse some 15 billion dollars over five years beginning in fiscal year 2004, which started Oct. 1.

But Bush's plan, which many hailed as a major breakthrough when it was first announced last January, is getting off to a slow start. The president has asked for only two billion dollars for 2004, although Congress, where a strong majority in both parties appears to have agreed on the urgency of the threat, has tentatively approved 2.4 billion dollars.

"These candidates are rising to the challenge being laid down by the world's top health experts," said Dr. Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance (GAA), which co-sponsored the 'Stop AIDS Platform' on which the candidates' pledge is based.

"It's time we recognise the true scale of the AIDS calamity. It is deeply in America's interest that we do so," he said, calling on each of the candidates to present their own detailed policy prescriptions for dealing, in particular, with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has taken an estimated three million lives this year, about 75 percent of them in Africa.

This year's World AIDS Day, which will be marked by events and protests in five major cities and more than 20 college campuses around the United States, comes amid more bad news about the global spread of HIV/AIDS.

Last week, UNAIDS, the agency which coordinates international responses to the disease, estimated that more than five million people will have been infected with HIV this year, and that some 42 million people worldwide, including 2.5 million children, are currently infected with the AIDS-causing virus or have AIDS.

The agency predicted that it will be another 30-40 years before the epidemic peaks.

UNICEF (the United Nations Children's Fund) also reported that more than 13 million children worldwide have lost one or both parents from AIDS, 11 million of them in Africa.

In some southern African countries, as many as one in five children have been orphaned in this way, putting unprecedented strains on extended families. UNICEF described the situation as "only the beginning of a crisis of gargantuan proportions".

In response, both UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have called for drastically scaling up access by poor people to life-prolonging anti-AIDS drugs.

While only tens of thousands of Africans, for example, now receive such treatment, WHO has released a plan to ensure access for three million people by 2005, with the ambitious goal of achieving universal treatment by 2012.

But achieving that goal will require significantly more funding than is now being provided by major donors, particularly to the multilateral Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a two-year-old initiative that was designed to expedite the flow of money and other resources to clinics and agencies on the ground and to reduce their administrative costs in reporting to many different aid agencies.

While the Bush administration has moved to increase its aid, AIDS activists and public-health professionals are disappointed both at the speed with which Washington has acted and its failure to provide the Global Fund, which is already running out of money, with more resources.

The United States has traditionally provided 25-33 percent of funds for global health programmes, but the Bush administration wanted to contribute only 200 million dollars next year -- an amount that, if other donors made proportionate contributions, would have severely hobbled the new agency's effectiveness.

Congress has increased the proposed contribution for fiscal year 2004 to 550 million dollars, but the administration has yet to agree.

Although pushed to the margins by the "war on terrorism" that followed the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the global AIDS crisis could still play a significant role in next year's election.

Led by Africa Action and other activist groups, African-Americans in particular are interested in how Washington deals with the epidemic that has hit Africa and the Caribbean hardest.

A number of church, women's, human rights and public-health groups are also seeking to make HIV/AIDS -- the most lethal disease in human history -- a central issue in next year's election.

The 'Stop AIDS Platform', which was initiated by Health GAP, the Student Global AIDS Campaign, and the American Medical Students Association, has been endorsed by more than 100 organisations, including Physicians for Human Rights, RESULTS, the National Organization for Women and the United Methodist Church.

Monday will also mark the launch of a new website of interested groups, AIDSVote.org, dedicated to informing the public about the extent of the crisis, both at home and abroad, and of the candidates' proposed responses to it.

In addition to providing 30 billion dollars by 2008, the Stop AIDS Platform, to which all nine Democratic candidates have committed, calls for billions of dollars to be earmarked for AIDS orphans.

It also includes: deeper and broader debt cancellation for all impoverished nations; greater attention to the empowerment of women and girls in fighting HIV/AIDS; and adopting trade policies that will make it much easier for poor countries to import generic anti-AIDS and other essential medicines.

On Sunday, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, the current front-runner for the Democratic nomination, released a number of policy proposals for dealing with AIDS both in the United States and abroad that echoed the pledge. "As president," Dean said, "I will not stand silent while this disease continues to claim victims."

The other candidates signing the pledge included retired General Wesley Clark, Senator John Edwards, former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, Representative Dick Gephardt, Sen. John Kerry, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Sen. Joe Lieberman, and Reverend Al Sharpton.

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+Global AIDS Alliance (http://www.globalaidsalliance.org/press112503.html)

+UNAIDS (http://www.unaids.org/en/default.asp)

+Global Fund (http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/)

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