The New York Times - September 23, 2009
Stephanie Strom

Starting in January, travelers in the United States and other countries buying airline tickets through some of the world's largest booking companies -- including Travelocity, Orbitz and other companies owned or served by Sabre, Travelport and Amadeus -- will have the option of adding $2 to their cost to support the fund-raising efforts of Unitaid, which fights life-threatening diseases in poor countries.

Philippe Douste-Blazy, chairman of the organization and the under secretary general at the United Nations charged with developing new financing mechanisms for development projects, said he expected the extended program to add hundreds of millions of dollars to Unitaid's coffers each year.

In 2006, when Mr. Douste-Blazy was the French foreign minister, he and Jacques Chirac, who was then the French president, and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil conceived the idea of taxing airline tickets and subsequently persuaded 16 countries to participate -- one has not yet had a chance to contribute. He said the tax currently applies to 7 percent to 10 percent of airline tickets sold and accounts for three-quarters of Unitaid's financing. "This new program will be the first global voluntary citizen contribution system, and it comes at a very important time," Mr. Douste-Blazy said.

He noted that government support for development aid is decreasing because of the economic crisis, which will make United Nations targets known as the Millennium Development Goals harder to achieve. The eight goals -- which include reducing extreme poverty by half and providing universal primary education -- were adopted in 2000 at a meeting of world leaders, but they are looking more and more elusive as the 2015 deadline approaches.

A United Nations report released last week found that donations have fallen $35 billion short of the pledges made by the Group of Eight industrialized countries in 2005. Similarly, aid to Africa has fallen $20 billion short of the total pledged.

"The consequences for developing countries are devastating, particularly for health care," Mr. Douste-Blazy said.

The program, to be unveiled Wednesday at the United Nations under the name Massive Good, will work through various channels that people use to buy airline tickets. At the point of purchase, customers will be asked to indicate their willingness to make the contribution, while corporate travel departments will be asked to agree to add the donation to each ticket they buy for employees' travel. Countries that have already agreed to the tax will continue to pay it.

Unitaid uses the money it raises to do what Daniel Altman, president of the consulting firm North Yard Economics, calls "innovative spending." For instance, the partners it supports were able to use its buying power to coax drug companies to create pediatric doses of anti-retroviral medicines so parents would not have to break pills originally intended for adults.

Because Unitaid finances drugs for three-quarters of the children in the world receiving anti-retrovirals, it could guarantee a market for those drugs. Mr. Altman, who is writing a book about new types of development programs with Mr. Douste-Blazy, said, "The financing has led to much higher quality of treatments for these diseases."
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