Annan appeals for joint AIDS effort

The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, on Monday appealed to the world's richest countries to contribute more towards the Global AIDS Fund. "The time for additional funding has arrived, and I hope that you, the Group of Eight leaders, who played such an important role in getting the Fund up and running, will now endow it with the further resources it needs to achieve our shared goals," Annan said in a statement. He acknowledging the dramatic increases in HIV/AIDS funding by US President George W Bush, French President Jacques Chirac and others. Bush recently used America's newly signed US $15 billion global AIDS bill to solicit countries at the "Group of Eight" (G8) summit in France for bigger contributions. "Those efforts are at last putting some real resources behind the comprehensive global strategy, which puts equal emphasis on prevention and treatment," Annan added.