US President George W Bush has signed into law a $15-billion plan to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean.
Mr Bush said he would ask key US allies next week to step up their own AIDS-battling commitments at the upcoming G8 summit in Evian, France.
|
"I will urge our European partners and Japan and Canada to join this great mission of rescue, to match their good intentions with real resources," said the president, who leaves later this week for Poland, Russia and then the G8.
"I will remind them that time is not on our side," because each day 8,000 more people die of AIDS in Africa, and 14,000 more are infected with the virus that causes it, HIV, said Mr Bush.
European critics have long charged that the US international aid budget is small relative to the size of its economy. If acted upon, the measure Mr Bush signed would triple the annual AIDS-fighting budget.
The UN's HIV and AIDS agency, UNAIDS, hailed the plan while warning that even the new funds would fall short of the amount needed to fight the disease.
The new measure allows the US government to spend $3 billion a year through 2008 to provide treatment and preventive care to those suffering from the disease and those in danger of contracting the virus.
But the US Congress must allocate the funds in yearly budgets.
The move aims to highlight the softer side of US foreign policy in the wake of a sharp break with some traditional allies - including France, Germany, Canada and Mexico - over the war in Iraq.
Some 42 million people in the world, including 30 million in Africa, are infected by HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, from which more than 30 million have already died.
The US president has said the plan would prevent seven million new HIV infections, treat at least two million with life-extending drugs, and provide care for millions who already have AIDS or were orphaned by the disease.
Countries due to receive priority treatment under the US plan are Botswana, Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
The legislation allows, but does not require, that $1 billion of the total amount can be sent to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, created in 2002 and managed by the World Health Organisation.
Some critics in the AIDS-fighting community have also charged that Mr Bush's budget for 2004 only requests about $1.7 billion instead of the $3 billion envisioned in the legislation.
AFP