NEW DELHI - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged 23 million US dollars to India to help halt the spread of the virus that causes AIDS.
The money will be used to train government health workers in HIV and AIDS prevention programs and to fund groups that work with high risk segments of the population, such as prostitutes and intravenous drug users.
LUSAKA (AFP) - The United States is to give Zambia 149 million dollars to support the free distribution of AIDS drugs following "significant progress" in Lusaka's efforts to fight the pandemic.
The funds will be channeled through the US President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a statement said Monday.
Some 70,000 people receive free anti-retroviral treatment in public hospitals in Zambia, where 16 percent of the 11 million population have HIV, the virus that can lead to AIDS.
Pop singer Madonna is in Malawi in Africa to try to help orphaned children living with HIV and AIDS and she plans to launch six projects to help the underprivileged children.
According to government official Benston Kilimbe from the Malawi Social Welfare Department, Madonna is also hoping to adopt an African child.
OVER a million Zimbabweans who are unaware that they’re HIV positive will be helped as part of a UK-funded campaign to help fight the country’s HIV and AIDS epidemic.
International Development Secretary Hilary Benn yesterday awarded £20 million for the NGO-run, AIDS prevention programme that aims to reduce new infections by increasing testing and encouraging safer sexual behaviour.
The funding will help Population Services International (PSI) Zimbabwe’s five year programme to distribute over 250 million condoms, including female condoms distributed through a network of 700 hair salons, provide better testing and counselling services so that 800,000 people can learn their HIV status, target villages around the country with a music and games-based local education campaign and launch a national campaign spearheaded by a HIV-positive pastor that will help break down the stigma around AIDS.
GENEVA (AFP) - The first beneficiaries of an international tax on air travel to help the world's poor will be 250,000 children suffering from HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said.
Douste-Blazy, who was appointed to head the agency overseeing the funds, UNITAID, said 19 countries have started taking steps to implement the levy.
WITH a Doctorate degree in medicine from Tufts University, a Masters degree in International Public Health from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Molecular Biology from Lehigh University, Dr. Akudo Anyanwu Ikemba is one of the notable Nigerian scientists committed to the cause of African development currently undermined by the devastation of AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
AS the CEO of Friends Africa and a director with the Center for Global Health and Economic Development at the Earth Institute of Columbia University, as well as former Fellow of the Centre for Diseases Control (CDC) Atlanta, USA, and former lecturer at Tufts University School of Medicine, she is at the forefront of a positive effort towards altering the future of Africa in the prevention and treatment of the threat posed by HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria.
In this encounter, she sheds light on... Excerpts.
ABUJA, Nigeria - Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates met President Olusegun Obasanjo this weekend for talks on fighting poverty and disease on the world's poorest continent, a senior official said Sunday.
Information Minister Frank Nweke said Gates arrived in Nigeria with his wife, Melinda, on Saturday and met with Obasanjo at his farm on the outskirts of the country's biggest city, Lagos.
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.
