DUBLIN (AFP) - Ireland will provide 70 million euros (89 million dollars) to help fight HIV/ AIDS in Africa under an agreement signed by Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and former US president, Bill Clinton.
The new funding agreement will make Ireland the largest single country donor to the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative.
The aid will be particularly targeted at Mozambique and Lesotho, two of the African countries worst affected by HIV/AIDS.
"The first three years of our relationship with the Clinton Foundation yielded real results for the people of Mozambique. I look forward to seeing similar progress in Lesotho over the coming years," Ahern said Friday.
In 2003, Ahern and Clinton signed an initial co-operation agreement to battle HIV/AIDS which Ahern regards as a humanitarian disaster and one of the greatest development challenges of the 21st century.
Under the new agreement, Mozambique will get 60 million euros (76.3 million dollars) over the next five years, while Lesotho will receive 10 million euros (12.7 million dollars).
A government statement said that more than 23 percent of the adult population in Lesotho was HIV-positive and there was a need to ensure services are made available in the mountainous rural areas of the country which are under-resourced.
Ireland has made the fight against HIV/AIDS a core priority of its international aid programme, spending more than 100 million euros (127 million dollars) per year helping developing countries in fighting the virus.
