Blair demands more aid to combat AIDS
Tony Blair has used an article in The Sun newspaper to make the case for acting on AIDS.
Mr Blair argued that it is in the national interest of western countries to deal with AIDS, and lauded the fact that the UK is second only to the USA as a bilateral donor on AIDS and HIV.
Mr Blair has raised the issue before, when he and Jacques Chirac pushed Europe to increase funding for AIDS projects to match the USA’s $1billion pledge. However, while he and the French president enthusiastically promoted such a promise, others in Europe raised concerns about how the money would be found.
Mr Blair’s article comes on World AIDS day, and the World Health Organisation has today launched a project to get drugs to three million AIDS sufferers by 2005.
The plan will require 100,000 health workers to be trained to provide the treatment. This should allow millions of people in the developing world to receive antiretroviral drug therapy that they presently lack.
Eight thousand people die every day from AIDS, and 14,000 become infected. The total number of sufferers is now believed to be 40 million, equivalent to the population of Poland.
Many of the sufferers live in the poorest parts of the world, particularly sub Saharan Africa, which has more than ten million sufferers compared to less than one million in Western Europe.
The new programme will aim to prolong the lives of those dying in the developing world, reducing the growing number of so-called Aids orphans, who have lost both parents because of the plague.
However, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, has criticised the failure to deal with the problem so far.
He commented: “The epidemic continues its lethal march around the world, with few signs of slowing down. We have failed to reach several of the Declaration’s targets set for this year.”
It is believed that there may be another 45 million new cases by 2010, but that two thirds of these could be prevented if successful measures in some parts of the world were implemented elsewhere.
