Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - Monday December 10, 2001
Evelyn Leopold

The program, expected to last two to three years and operate mainly in Africa, would attach itself to 100 sites where existing projects are in place, expanding treatment to mothers and infants and studying how a country with poor health facilities can treat an entire family.

About 600,000 infants are infected annually with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, during pregnancy or breast feeding and few survive their first year.

The United States has only 200 such deaths each year.

"It is probably one of the most obscene inequities in the world today," said Gordon Conway, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, organizer of the project.

"The problem is that we are only acting here on it in the West and ignoring what is happening in Africa," he said at a news conference at UN headquarters.

Conway said about $50 million to $60 million has been raised to date, with the rest expected within three years. Some 10 to 20 sites in Africa, not announced, would be chosen to begin the program early next year.

Dr. Allan Rosenfield, dean of the Colombia University Mailman School of Public Health, said the program would evaluate what worked best in public health systems in each country surveyed.

In some, powdered milk was the answer, while in others where bottles could not be sterilized this would not work.

Over time, the program intends to treat all members of the family infected with the virus, he said.

Few developing countries and none in Africa have treatment programs for all people infected with HIV. Brazil is an exception, with a massive health care program that over the last decade has cut AIDS deaths in half.

Some 36.1 million people around the world have been infected with HIV and 3 million people alone died of the disease last year, UN figures show. Africa remains the hardest hit region, home to 70% of the world's HIV-infected adults and 80% of the infected children.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed a global war chest, estimating that $7 billion to $10 billion should be spent annually to halt or even reverse the pandemic. But not many pledges have materialized.

The new project by the foundations is meant to be a "small icebreaker" to the larger UN campaign, Conway said.

Other foundations involved so far include Bill and Melinda Gates, William and Flora Hewlett, Robert Wood Johnson, Henry J. Kaiser Family, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, David and Lucile Packard and the Ted Turner-initiated UN Foundation.

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