Hopes that Bush brings fulfilment of AIDS funding

As President George W Bush travels to the continent this week, the US response to Africa's HIV/AIDS pandemic will fall under the spotlight. Activists and lobby groups will be watching closely and view this trip as Bush's "last chance" to deliver on his US $15 billion emergency AIDS pledge.

In January 2003, Bush declared that the funds would go towards "a work of mercy" and the US would "lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature". But according to activists, this pledge remains unfulfilled.

"His budget proposal, released in February, failed to frontload the spending, relied on slow-paced US agencies, and exaggerated the amount for on-the-ground services specific to AIDS," a briefing by the Global AIDS Alliance (GAA) noted.

According to the GAA, during a widely covered State Department ceremony in May 2003, Bush signed an AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria spending authorisation bill that specified spending of $3 billion in the financial year 2004. But the actual level of funds provided would most likely be closer to $1.55 billion.

The lobby group warned that the $15 billion had been misinterpreted and the figure had to be closely analysed. The proposed spending was spread over 5 years and included existing spending levels as well as the president's new proposal.

The figure would eventually shrink to $12,862 billion, or $1,55-billion for 2004, once all non-AIDS and research spending had been subtracted, the GAA said.

Bush's five-year AIDS plan was also criticised by international treatment access group, the Health-Gap Coalition, for sidestepping the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. "The Global Fund is facing an immediate fiscal shortfall of $700 million in 2003 alone, because the US and other donors have not committed their fair share," the NGO said in a statement.

More than a year after the announcement of a US initiative aimed at the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Africa, questions have been raised about when HIV-positive mothers will benefit from the programme.

Despite promises that HIV/AIDS would be high on the agenda during the US president's trip, treatment activists are concerned that Bush is bringing few, if any, "deliverables" to the continent.

A group of 31 African doctors and nurses, and 12 international health professionals from 11 countries, on Monday sent a letter to Bush asking him to "take specific steps to combat the global HIV/AIDS epidemic."

The letter, coordinated by Physicians for Human Rights' Health Action AIDS project, calls for "the administration to live up to its commitment" of treating two million people living with HIV/AIDS by 2006, and preventing seven million new HIV infections.

The letter concluded: "See people with HIV/AIDS as we see them. We hope that you will see the whole person, a person whose needs extend far beyond the narrow scope of antiretroviral medications and HIV prevention messages, a person who also needs the fulfilment of basic human rights, including clean water and basic sanitation, adequate nutrition, and poverty alleviation, health and education - hope for the future."