US urges others to spend more
2004-07-11 15:39
Bangkok - US envoys to the world Aids conference fought back against charges that Washington was a bystander in the war against acquired immune deficiency syndrome and challenged other countries to increase their own contributions.
"This year America is putting about twice as much money to work in this fight as all of the other donor nations of the world combined and we need every donor nation to step up its commitment," said Randall Tobias, the US special ambassador on Aids.
In addition to President George W Bush's $15bn Aids programme, which distributes help bilaterally to poor countries, the United States tops the list of donors to the multinational vehicle, the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Tobias said.
More than a third of the fund's revenues come from the United States, Tobias told a press conference at the start of the 15th International Aids Conference in Bangkok.
Anne Peterson, assistant administrator for the USAids' bureau of global health, said developing countries and other developed nations needed to give more.
"Some of the countries which haven't given yet ought to give," Peterson told AFP, declining to name any states but noting that France "has done a marvellous job."
She said the United States had committed about $550m to the fund this year, but that only $360m had been signed over because other countries have not come through.
The remaining $190m can only be given if other countries donate their share, Peterson said, citing a new US law that requires the United States' contribution in any single year comprise no more than one third of the total amount donated to the fund.
The biggest donor
The United States made the first donation to the Global Fund when it was created in 2002 and has by far been the biggest donor, accounting for 35 to 36 percent of the fund, Tobias said.
Richard Feachem, director of the Global Fund, warned on Sunday disaster loomed unless key contributors such as the United States and Europe put up the $3.5bn needed for programmes in 2005.
"If the Global Fund cannot continue to grow in its support for programmes against Aids, TB and malaria, the result is catastrophic, and we will not win," Feachem told reporters.
"We will not turn around the HIV/Aids pandemic, we will not stop TB, we will not roll back malaria. It's absolutely black and white," he added.
Activists have criticised the Bush administration for launching its own bilateral mechanism to funnel $15bn, allocated over five years, to fight Aids in Africa, the Caribbean and Vietnam, instead of using the Global Fund, which provides cash to countries for their own projects.
And critics compare American contributions for what is billed as the world's greatest health peril with the cost of the US-led war of Iraq.
According to an estimate made last August, the military occupation alone was costing US taxpayers around a billion dollars a week.