Results tagged “fund raising” from AIDS & HIV

The Cabinet has tentatively approved a $2.9 billion program aimed at raising the country's life expectancy by tackling AIDS, diabetes, tuberculosis and other diseases.

Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov trumpeted the HIV portion of the program as "an essential step forward."

Under the program, the state would provide medical treatment for 30,000 people living with HIV. "A couple years ago, only 700 people with HIV or AIDS could get treatment," Zurabov told the Cabinet while presenting the five-year program Thursday.

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.

By Raymond S. Blanks, The Washington Post

The promises made by former mayor Anthony A. Williams more than a year ago to bolster the battle against HIV have not been realized.

The HIV-AIDS epidemic in the District remains disturbing and depressing. The rate of infection remains 10 times the national rate. African American women make up 90 percent of all infected female residents, and many thousands of residents with HIV do not know their status.

Black residents make up 60 percent of the District's population but represent more than 80 percent of AIDS cases. Nearly 20,000 of the city's residents are living with HIV. Recent tests indicate that, among the 16,700 persons tested, 580 tested positive, a new increase of nearly 4 percent.

Zimbabwe this year aims to more than triple the number of people on anti-retrovirals (ARVs) from the current level of 50,000, a senior official was quoted as saying.

"We hope that by the end of 2007, about 160,000 people would have been enrolled under the anti-retroviral programme and we are working hard to ensure that this happens," Owen Mugurungi, National co-ordinator of health ministry's HIV/AIDS programme, told the state-run Herald daily.

About 18 percent of the country's 12 million people are HIV-positive.

According to the government, at least 300,000 people need ARVs throughout the country. Doctors have said that people with a CD4 count of 200 or less should be on anti-retrovirals.

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 Center for Public Integrity (http://www.publicintegrity.org/default.aspx) today released "Divine Intervention," (http://www.publicintegrity.org/aids) a year-long investigation into how President Bush's $15 billion initiative for care, treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS abroad has failed countries struggling with the pandemic.

The special report, the first of its kind to examine the policies, politics and goals of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), looks at its effects on specific "focus countries," as well as India and Thailand, where the sex-trade industry is driving high rates of infection. Reporters affiliated with the Center's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (http://www.publicintegrity.org/icij) in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa, Haiti, India and Thailand found that faith-based ideology -- including abstinence -- often trumps science in the guise of federal rules, regulations and support of the organizations receiving taxpayer money.

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.

The Santa Rosa Minority HIV/AIDS Task Force`s contract with the Florida Department of Health is not being renewed, and the nonprofit agency will close its doors.

"We received a letter that our contract would end Dec. 31, but no explanation was given," executive director Gail Collins said. "The $75,000 we get from the state is our only source of money."

Milton Mayor Guy Thompson has sent a letter of support for the task force to the department.

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.

Dismayed that the 2007 city budget proposed by Mayor Richard Daley has no increase in HIV-prevention funding , Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) is seeking an amendment to mandate a $1.7 million boost to fight the disease.

The number of reported HIV/AIDS cases in Chicago has increased 20 percent since 2003--particularly among African-Americans and Latinos, according to the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. But there has not been a city budget increase in HIV-prevention funding since then.

"Early prevention could have saved so many lives in my community: the white gay male, North Side community," said Tunney. "We need these dollars for the ravaging effects of what's happening in the Latino and African-American communities."