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Subject: [AfricaMatters] Clinton Signs Africa AIDS Bill
Politics News - updated 5:56 PM ET Aug 19 Add to My Yahoo!
Reuters | AP | Elections | ABCNews
Saturday August 19 2:30 PM ET
Clinton Signs Africa AIDS Bill
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. (AP) - President Clinton signed a bill Saturday that sets
up a global trust fund to provide funds for AIDS prevention, health care and
education to countries hardest hit by the disease, which killed 2.8 million
people last year.
``Today alone, African families will hold nearly 6,000 funerals for loved
ones who died of AIDS,'' Clinton said in his weekly radio address, delivered
less than a week before he was to visit Nigeria and Tanzania.
``Fighting AIDS worldwide is not just the right thing to do, it's the smart
thing. In our tightly connected world, infectious disease anywhere is a
threat to public health everywhere,'' Clinton said.
In addition to creating a World Bank AIDS Trust Fund, the bill authorizes
funds for the administration's fiscal 2001 initiatives to fight HIV and AIDS
worldwide and strengthens the U.S. response to the health emergency.
It includes $300 million for the U.S. Agency for International Development
for education, voluntary testing and counseling, prevention of
mother-to-child transmission and care for those living with HIV or AIDS.
``Already HIV-AIDS is the leading cause of death in Africa and increasingly
threatens Asia and the states of the former Soviet Union,'' Clinton said.
``In the hardest-hit countries, AIDS is leaving students without teachers,
patients without doctors, and children without parents.''
The legislation also authorizes $50 million in new funds for the Global
Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization; $10 million for the International
AIDS Vaccine Initiative; and $60 million to fight tuberculosis - the single
largest killer of adults worldwide and the leading cause of death of those
with AIDS.
The bill authorizes U.S. contributions of $150 million a year for two years.
The money is intended as a springboard to bring in up to $1 billion a year
from international donors. The House had pushed for a $500 million U.S.
contribution over five years, but the Senate scaled it back.
The trust fund ``represents an extraordinary effort to move with urgency to
address the horrific AIDS epidemic,'' said Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, House
sponsor of the bill. ``It is our hope and expectation that the annual
contribution from the U.S. will leverage enough contributions from other
donors to increase several fold the size of the trust fund.''
The fund, administered by the U.S. representative to the World Bank board of
trustees, will gather public and private funding to combat the spread of HIV
and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa which has 10 percent of the world's population
but 70 percent of the world's AIDS cases.
``Some are calling it the Marshall Plan for AIDS,'' said Sandra Thurman,
director of the AIDS policy office at the White House, referring to the
massive plan for the economic recovery of Europe after World War II. ``We're
looking at a pandemic the likes of which we have never seen.''
AIDS kills 6,000 people a day in Africa and has orphaned some 15 percent of
children in the worst-affected cities.
The United Nations has predicted the disease will wipe out half the teen-age
population in some poor African countries. By some estimates, the disease
will lower life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa from 59 years in the early
1990s to 45 by 2015.
-
On the Net: The AIDS bill, H.R. 3519, can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov
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