Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - Thursday December 3, 2003

Thompson stopped in Nairobi, the third leg of his African tour to promote AIDS awareness, to launch a partnership between business and a U.N.-backed AIDS project.

"This is a partnership in which we have not done enough to incorporate the business community," Thompson said.

The partnership brings the U.N.-backed Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria together with the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS -- which currently includes almost 130 international businesses.

"We need everyone to join this fight, a fight in which we cannot afford to lose. The continent of Africa has been ravaged too long...millions have died, millions have been left as orphans," Thompson said.

An estimated 26.6 million people in Africa are infected with HIV/AIDS -- more than the rest of the world put together.

Nine companies pledged to use their resources to battle the disease in countries where they work. No details of how much they would invest were available.

Drug company Bristol Myers Squibb, which controls the patent for the anti-retroviral drug stavudine, an said it would replicate its prevention center in Botswana with another in an unspecified African country.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer said it would work on community outreach in Kenya. Mining giant Anglo American, South African power utility Eskom and car group Daimler Chrysler all announced projects in South Africa.

French building materials group Lafarge said it was working in Cameroon, beverage company Heineken in Ghana and oil major Chevron Texaco in both Nigeria and Russia. India's Tata Steel is active in India.

The projects, many of which are already up and running, include community clinics, training health workers and education.

"We came to Africa to increase private-sector engagement in the war on HIV/AIDS and this announcement is exactly the kind of innovative idea we want to promote," Thompson said.

Thompson and his delegation of business executives, religious leaders and AIDS experts visits the western Kenyan town of Kisumu Thursday and goes onto Uganda Friday. He is expected to fly home late Friday or Saturday.

The Global Fund was set up in 2001 as a kind of global war chest against the three big infectious diseases by the United Nations and the G8 group of rich nations. AIDS, TB and malaria kill nearly six million people each year, mostly in poor countries.

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