Recently in AIDS Fund Raising Category

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- If Congress allows a funding shortfall in a key global AIDS relief program to continue, more than 100,000 people could die, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Mark Dybul said this week.

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, is a five-year, $15 billion program designed with yearly increases in funding. But Congress has yet to approve $900 million in expected funding for 2007.

If that money is not appropriated, the program, which provides treatment for 822,000 AIDS patients in 15 focus countries, will have to stop enrolling new individuals by February. Its counseling and testing programs, which have thus far reached 19 million people, will also feel the budget squeeze.

Zimbabwe has received a 65 million US dollar grant from the United Nations to bolster its fight against HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, a government minister has said.

"We signed the agreement with them (the UN's Global Fund) yesterday," junior health minister Edwin Muguti told AFP Thursday.

"These funds will be used to increase our HIV and AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis programme. We also hope to reintroduce the fixed drug combination of anti-tuberculosis drugs using these funds."

The fight against the spread of HIV and AIDS in the country got a boost on Thursday with a 49-million-dollar Global Fund support to three agencies to combat the scourge of the disease.

The three agencies are the National Action Committee Against HIV/AIDS (NACA), Society for Family Health (SFH) and the Association for Reproductive and Family Health (ARFH).

The agencies jointly signed the agreement with Global Fund at the reception organised for the visiting delegation of the Fund at the Ocean View Restaurant, Victoria Island Lagos.

Indian pharmaceutical companies Cipla and Ranbaxy under an agreement with the Clinton Foundation will reduce the prices of 19 different pediatric antiretroviral drugs in 62 developing countries to an average of 45% less than what treatments currently cost in the countries, former President Clinton announced on Thursday ahead of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, the AP/Forbes reports (George, AP/Forbes, 11/30).

One of the formulations, a new three-in-one treatment for children, will cost about 16 cents per day, or $60 annually, according to the foundation. (Clinton Foundation release, 11/30). The antiretrovirals will be supplied directly to countries' governments and then will be distributed through public health programs and HIV prevention programs (AP/Forbes, 11/30). 

The Australian government will spend an additional $215 million as part of a commitment to fight the spread of AIDS in the Asia-Pacific region.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the additional commitment would go towards meeting the $600 million promise to fight HIV and AIDS.

This includes $65 million over eight years to help local authorities reduce the likelihood of HIV infection among injecting drug users in Burma, Vietnam, two southern Chinese provinces, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines.

This will double the programs already currently in place in these countries.

CANDA - The federal government chose World AIDS Day to announce its long-awaited HIV-AIDS initiative package, pledging to spend an extra $120 million this year.

International Co-operation Minister Josée Verner made the announcement at a news conference in Montreal on Friday.

"We subscribe to this year's theme, which is to put a stop to AIDS," she said in French. "The new Canadian government is determined to play a very important role in combatting AIDS."

AIDS activists had expected the funding to materialize during the World AIDS conference in Toronto in mid-August.

GENEVA (AFP) - Several charities have accused rich countries of undermining a World Trade Organisation agreement to improve access for the world's poorest people to cheaper drugs against diseases such as HIV/AIDS.

The rules were set up by the WTO's 149 members at Doha, Qatar in 2001 to grant poor nations threatened by serious diseases a temporary exemption from international laws protecting intellectual property rights on medicines.

The British charity Oxfam said developed countries had done "nothing or very little" to meet their obligations and had even undermined the agreement in some cases.

PARAMARIBO, Suriname: Promising additional funds if necessary, the Netherlands has donated 303,300 euros towards several HIV/AIDS projects in Suriname.

At the signing ceremony Tuesday in Paramaribo, Dutch Minister of Development Cooperation, Agnes van Ardenne, stressed the importance of the fight against the deadly disease. “I am very pleased to sign these documents and the Netherlands is willing to donate more funds if necessary,” said the Dutch official.

Suriname's acting Minister of Health, Michel Felisi, stressed the importance of minimising the stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS. The funds donated to the National AIDS Program (NAP) are to be utilised for activities to combat stigma and discrimination of people living with HIV and AIDS.

The deaths of three HIV-positive people on the waiting list of South Carolina's AIDS Drug Assistance Program -- a federal- and state-funded program that provides HIV/AIDS-related medications to low-income, uninsured and underinsured HIV-positive individuals -- highlights the need for an emergency increase in federal funds for the program, the HIV/AIDS advocacy group Title II Community AIDS National Network said recently, CQ HealthBeat reports (Reichard, CQ HealthBeat, 11/7).

According to TII CANN, there are more than 200 South Carolina residents on the state's ADAP waiting list. About 1,800 HIV-positive people are enrolled in South Carolina's ADAP. Sixty-seven percent of the clients are black, and 85% have incomes lower than 200% of the federal poverty level, which is about $19,000 annually, according to TII CANN.

The state's waiting list is the longest in the country. Carmen Julious, director of Palmetto AIDS Life Support Services, said South Carolina's ADAP would need $3 million to move everyone from the waiting list by June 2007 and an additional $8 million by 2008 (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 11/7). 

Global Fund International has approved $67m (Frw361.8bn) project proposals for Rwanda to control HIV/Aids and Tuberculosis (TB). According to sources, the approval follows the submission of three project proposals worth $76m (approxFrw410.4b) early this year.
 
Efforts to get a comment from Dr Innocent Nyaruhirira, the State Minister in charge of Aids and Other Infectious Diseases over the development were fruitless by press time.

ut a source in the Ministry of Health confirmed the approval of the two project proposals, saying they covered the next five years.Shakilla Umutoni, a member of the Global Fund Country Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMs) for Rwanda, said: “When we met as members of CCM-Rwanda, we had so many proposals under each programme (HIV/Aids, TB and Malaria). But as the Global Fund required, we had to fuse them all up or even drop others to come up with three of them.”