Meeting to Divvy Global AIDS Funds

The board administering the global AIDS fund is meeting at Columbia University today to decide how the first allocation of money will be spent -- essentially determining the fate of treatment for millions of people living with HIV in poor nations. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was created last year at the behest of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as a means for bringing treatment advances to poor AIDS patients, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa. Annan called for spending $7 billion to $10 billion annually.

Developing countries have asked for more than $5 billion, but to date the fund contains less than $700 million. On Capitol Hill, Senate members are scrambling to come up with another $1.2 billion to augment this year's $250 million US commitment.

Several UN agencies, as well as humanitarian organizations such as Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), released statements promoting spending all, or most, of the fund on buying drugs for treatment in poor countries. "This is a war to end all wars. A war between good and bad, greediness and humanity," Zambian treatment advocate Brigitte Syamalezwe, 43, told a New York news conference. Yesterday, the World Health Organization announced from Geneva that it is adding HIV drugs to the official Essential Drugs List used as a basis for regional discount buying of patented pharmaceuticals.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) are asking the White House to add $700 million to the emergency spending act. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who is seeking $500 million for drugs to block mother-to-child HIV transmission in poor countries, is being lobbied to direct the money to the global fund.

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