Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 3 2005 (IPS) — Worried that a lack of resources for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention could result in hundreds of thousands of deaths in poor countries this year, health activists are urging the world’s richest nations to do much more to fight the pandemic.

The renewed call for funding comes after a U.N. study indicated Thursday that the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS faces a 700-million-dollar shortfall to pay for this year’s worldwide programmes for treatment and prevention of the deadly disease.

The figures should give pause to leaders of industrialised nations scheduled to meet next month at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, said Asia Russell, international policy director at the U.S.-based advocacy group Health GAP.

”They need a reality check,” said Russell. ”They have to wake up.”

Health GAP and other groups involved in global efforts to combat HIV/AIDS have accused the G8’s seven industrialised powers – the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan – of trying to shrug off what activists call the wealthy nations’ responsibility to help prevent and treat AIDS.

At a special meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in 2001, those nations had promised to scale up the response to AIDS, yet none of them has been fully able to meet their commitments on funding, activists and officials alike have agreed.

”While it is true that donors have increased their response since 2001, they are still refusing to mount a war against the AIDS crisis,” said John Riley of the New York-based activist network ACT UP.

Studies show that every day, more than 8,000 people die of AIDS and about 15,000 get infected. Activists said this tragedy could be avoided if the rich were willing to open up their wallets as well as their hearts.

Among solutions activists have pushed is canceling wealthy nations’ debt claims against poor countries, since 14 million HIV-infected people – more than one-third the world total – live in countries the World Bank has classified as ”heavily burdened” by debt. These countries, mostly in Africa, face especially severe HIV epidemics, health and economic experts have agreed.

Since 1970, African countries have borrowed about 540 billion dollars. They have paid back a total of 550 billion dollars but at the end of 2002, there still remained a debt of 295 billion dollars, according to Avert, an international AIDS/HIV charity based in Britain.

Many of the same countries and institutions that loaned the money also have thrown financial lifelines to poor governments at risk of bankruptcy. Yet this help comes attached to conditions – for example, that recipients open their markets to international competition or privatise public services and pension funds – and wealthy states show no apparent willingness to abandon these demands, activists charged.

Half-hearted responses to the debt problem would not work, they said.

”Debt cancellation is what must have to happen, not the extension of this minimal, conditional relief,” said Health GAP’s Russell, adding that she hoped that the wealthy powers’ leaders would take up seriously the issue of debt and its impact on HIV/AIDS at their talks in Scotland next month.

”The wealthiest countries are not doing their fair share. It’s time they must set a new example. They must have a real plan on debt control, not a raw deal,” she said.

On Friday, British finance minister Gordon Brown called for a doubling of aid by 2010 and 100-percent debt relief for Africa, as well as an end to many trade subsidies that poor countries had assailed as harming their farmers. But the moves face opposition from the administration U.S. President George W. Bush, which has said that the plan does not comply with the U.S. budget process.

The British government has said it considers 2005 a vital year for Africa and has stressed that without additional money the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) would be impossible to meet. These goals, set by U.N. members in 2000, include halving world poverty, eliminating illiteracy, and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015.

Though silent on the question of debt, in a speech at a high-level General Assembly meeting Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan reminded wealthy nations of their responsibilities.

”It’s time for governments to translate commitments into action,” he said, adding that halting the spread of HIV/AIDS was not only an MDG in its own right but also was ”a pre-requisite for reaching most of the others.”

U.N. researchers, in a recent assessment of international efforts to achieve the goals, say there are some encouraging signs that the global pandemic could be brought under control but the overall picture remains grim.

Worldwide, one in every 90 adults in low- and middle-income countries lives with HIV. As of last year, about 40 million people had the virus, nearly half of them women, according to the U.N. study.

It shows sub-Saharan Africa accounting for 64 percent of the world’s HIV infections and 74 percent of all AIDS-related deaths. The epidemic has left more than 12 million children to live as orphans with little hope for education or secure means of livelihood in the future.

The report makes specific recommendations for scaling up prevention and efforts to combat AIDS, including services to orphans, ensuring gender equality, and mobilising additional resources.

”Failure in our response to AIDS is a possibility too disturbing to contemplate,” warn the report’s authors, ”yet one that will surely occur if effective action is not taken.”