[afro-nets] Mr. Blair calls for more support to the HIV/AIDS fight

[Claudio Schuftan <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

Mr. Blair calls for more support to the HIV/AIDS fight
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UK COMMISSION FOR AFRICA REPORT SAYS DONORS "NOT PAYING WHAT
THEY PROMISED" TO FIGHT HIV/AIDS

Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report
11 March 2005
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=28600

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Commission for Africa on
Friday released its report, which criticized international do-
nors for "not paying what they promised" to fight HIV/AIDS, the
Financial Times reports (White, Financial Times, 3/11). The 460-
page report calls for a doubling of international aid to Africa
to $50 billion annually, the removal of trade barriers, debt
forgiveness and increased efforts to address poor governance,
corruption and war throughout the continent. The report also
calls for annual funding for HIV/AIDS to be increased to $10
billion annually within the next five years (Kaiser Daily
HIV/AIDS Report, 3/9).

In addition, the report urges the international community to
bring into line the "current disparate response" to the HIV/AIDS
pandemic and asks African nations to allocate 15% of their an-
nual budgets to health services and ensure that there are an ad-
ditional one million health care workers in Africa by 2015
(Agence France-Presse, 3/10).

Blair established the 17-member commission, which has nine Afri-
can members, in February 2004. The commission, which examined
challenges facing the continent and ways to resolve those is-
sues, includes politicians, economists and advocates from Africa
and developed nations. The report aims to put Africa in the
forefront of the international agenda during the United King-
dom's year as chair of the G8 and during its presidency of the
European Union (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 3/9).

Reaction

"Let us today pledge to make 2005 the year our eyes opened to
the full reality of Africa," Blair said, adding, "To the horror
of its daily and preventable death toll, to the grinding misery
of so many millions of its people, yet also to the hope that to-
gether we can change that reality for the better." The British
organization ActionAid said that the recommendations "are an am-
bitious but realistic agenda for debt, aid, trade, and HIV and
AIDS," adding that the "first real test will be whether it is
acted upon" at the G8 summit meeting in Scotland in July,
Reuters reports (Cawthorne, Reuters, 3/11).

"The Commission for Africa has come out with a clear, bold and
realistic vision for how Africa and the rest of the world to-
gether can bring this continent onto a road of development and
prosperity," Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global
Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said, adding, "We
welcome the priority that the Commission for Africa has given to
providing insecticide-treated bed nets and effective malaria
drugs, as well as drastically scaling up the battle against
HIV/AIDS" (Global Fund release, 3/11).