12389: Miami Herald: AIDS funding targets children in Haiti, Africa (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

Posted on Thu, Jun. 20, 2002

AIDS funding targets children in Haiti, Africa
BY ANDREA ROBINSON
arobinson@herald.com

Haiti and Guyana -- which have the highest rates of AIDS
and HIV in the Western Hemisphere -- and 12 African nations
would get badly needed help to keep mothers from passing
the virus to their children under a proposal announced
Wednesday by President Bush.

The five-year, $500 million package, designed to help
''save children from disease and death,'' is aimed mostly
at purchasing drugs that would block the transmission of
AIDS to unborn children. The White House estimates the plan
could save about 146,000 newborns a year.

''Medical science gives us the power to save these young
lives,'' said Bush, speaking in the Rose Garden at the
White House. ``Conscience demands we do so.''

Saying that AIDS has already killed 20 million people
worldwide and could kill 40 million more, the president
announced the funding plan a week before he is to go to
Canada for a world summit on Africa.

Bush also is expected to propose today to double spending
on a U.S. initiative for education in Africa to $200
million over five years and to announce plans to travel to
the continent next year, senior administration officials
said.

White House officials said Bush's AIDS proposal is meant to
soften criticism that the United States doesn't spend
enough on global initiatives.

The announcement was cheered by AIDS activists in South
Florida's large Caribbean community, which seeks to step up
its fundraising and outreach efforts in the region.

But it did little to quash the outcry of national AIDS
advocacy groups, which branded the proposal as ''a sham''
and ''grossly underfinanced.'' They say the Bush plan
doesn't go far enough because the plan shortchanges
prevention and care for mothers and other family members --
which could leave children healthy but orphaned.

The U.S. Agency for International Development estimated
about 800,000 infants are infected with HIV each year. The
White House said the majority of those births are in Africa
and the Caribbean.

In Haiti, 6 percent of the adult population, ages 15 to 49,
has HIV. In Guyana, the rate is 3 percent. By comparison,
the rate is .7 percent among adults in the United States.

Paul DeLay, director of the HIV/AIDS office at the Agency
for International Development, said that in Haiti about
8,000 pregnant women are newly diagnosed with the condition
each year.

''This will let us focus on identifying them,'' DeLay said.

The African nations that Bush targeted are Botswana, Ivory
Coast, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa
and Uganda. In 2003, the program will expand to Namibia,
Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia.

About $300 million would be allocated over the next five
years. DeLay said the other $200 million was recently
approved by Congress and could be sent soon.

The proposal brought sharp criticism from several national
AIDS activist groups, including Act Up, which said the
administration is ignoring people who already have AIDS.

Act Up, based in New York, and others want the United
States to contribute more to the U.N.-backed Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The United States has
pledged $500 million to that fund.

Robert Dabney, spokesman with the National Minority AIDS
Council in Washington, said the allocation fell short in
other ways. ''If we only target money [on mother-to-child
transmission] we save the child but we lose the mother,''
Dabney said. ``There will be fewer children dying, but
there will be more orphans.''

DeLay said the program does offer some support for families
where at least one person is infected.

''It's more than drugs,'' he said. ``This will be offered
to the husband, and if the child becomes infected, he or
she may need to be treated. We would link them up with
faith-based groups in their countries for support
services.''

He pointed out that to identify at-risk pregnant women,
larger numbers of women would be screened and tested. In
addition to medication, those who are positive would get
tips on safe breast-feeding.

Claudette Hayles, a Lauderdale Lakes businesswoman who
raises money to help people with AIDS in the Caribbean,
said any U.S. help is greatly needed.

''It really affects our people more than anyone else,'' she
said. ``We don't talk about it, and that's the major reason
it's so prevalent in the Caribbean. No one wants to admit
it.''

This report was supplemented with material from Herald wire
services.



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