Inter Press Service - October 17, 2002
Thalif Deen

The good news is that in several countries - including Nigeria, Indonesia, China, Jamaica, Bangladesh and Ukraine - political leaders are spearheading the fight against AIDS.

But the bad news, according to the United Nations, is that their campaign is being thwarted by lack of resources from international donors.

"In most countries where major progress against HIV/AIDS is reported, strong political leadership is a central feature," says a 20-page report by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Annan says that more political leaders in all regions of the world are now speaking openly about HIV/AIDS and the need for "an aggressive response".

Nigeria has launched a major effort to increase HIV/AID awareness nation-wide; Indonesia has started a national movement against the disease, while China hosted its first national conference against AIDS last November.

The two legislative chambers in Jamaica held a joint session last year specifically focusing on the spreading disease.

The president of Bangladesh is personally leading the country's response while Ukraine has identified 2002 as the "Year Against Aids".

By the end of last year, 40 countries in sub-Saharan Africa had developed strategies against AIDS, while 19 countries in that region now have national AIDS councils, compared with three bodies two years ago.

HIV/AIDS has also been an important agenda item at key political gatherings this year, including the Group of Eight summit in Canada, the World Economic Forum in New York and the International Conference on Financing for Development in Mexico.

But all these efforts, Annan complains, are being undermined by a shortage of external funding. Only a few of the hardest hit countries can afford to spend out of their overburdened national budgets.

One of the few exceptions, he says, is South Africa, which has tripled its investment in HIV/AIDS programmes to 89 million U.S. dollars, with spending projected to reach nearly double that level by 2004.

Uganda, which also has a successful anti-AIDS campaign, is planning to increase spending on HIV-related research and development by 25 percent by 2006.

UNAIDS, the joint U.N. agency fighting AIDS, says that spending in low and middle-income countries from all sources - national budgets, bilateral and multilateral assistance, and the private sector - has increased by more than 50 percent in 2002, to a projected 2.8 billion dollars.

But many countries report that their heavy debt burden impedes their ability to spend on HIV/AIDS, Annan said, pointing out that "even where HIV infection rates are escalating, HIV/AIDS programmes are sometimes unable to compete for adequate allocations, given other priorities".

But Annan's biggest grouse is the lack of international response. In January 2002, he established a 'Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria'.

The projected target was about 10 billion dollars annually, through 2005, to combat all three diseases on a global scale.

Last week the board of directors of the Fund released updated figures on the cost of mounting a global response to HIV/AIDS.

The new estimates project that financial needs will continue to increase significantly, and that by 2007, some 15 billion dollars a year will be needed to successfully combat AIDS.

But to date, the Fund has generated only about 2.1 billion dollars, mostly in pledges, reflecting a shortfall of over 7.9 billion dollars in the short term and about 12.9 billion dollars in the long term.

In its first round of disbursements last April, the Global Fund approved 58 out of 300 requests for funding, mostly for anti-AIDS retroviral drugs.

The 58 proposals, amounting to 1.6 billion dollars over the next five years, came from 40 developing countries.

An estimated two-thirds of the money allocated was earmarked to fight HIV/AIDS while the remainder was for TB and Malaria.

The United Nations has also complained that the flow of funds pledged has been very slow. Of the 2.1 billion dollars in pledges, only about 500 million dollars has been credited to the Fund by donors.

The pledges have come from countries such as the United States, Canada, Britain, France and also from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Stephen Lewis, U.N. special adviser on AIDS in Africa, says that there's been no money for months. "We're really in trouble unless it gets turned around". (END/IPS/WD/HE/DV/IP/TD/ML/02) .

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