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The Senate agreed last night that the United States should double current spending on the global battle against HIV/AIDS to more than $1 billion within the next two years.

The Washington Post; April 06, 2001; Pg. A06

Senate Backs Doubling Global AIDS Funds; Spending Would Exceed $1
Billion Within Next 2 Years Under Budget Outline

Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Senate agreed last night that the United States should double
current spending on the global battle against HIV/AIDS to more than $
1 billion within the next two years.

In an amendment to the Senate's non-binding budget blueprint passed
by voice vote, lawmakers added $ 200 million in fiscal 2002 and an
additional $ 500 million the following year. This year's budget for
international AIDS programs is about $ 460 million, three-quarters of
which is dispensed through the Agency for International Development.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has asked for a 10 percent in-
crease in the department's global AIDS accounts.

Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), leading a bipartisan group of co-sponsors,
called on the government to show leadership in "confronting one of
the most important moral, humanitarian and foreign policy decisions
of the new century." Frist said that "history will indelibly record
how the United States ... responds to the call. Inaction will be
measured in millions of lives lost, families destroyed and economies
ruined."

Similar calls for doubling AIDS spending have been made in the House.
Although more detailed decisions on all spending are left to the two
chambers' Appropriations committees, the budget resolution expresses
the intent of the Senate.

The amount of new money proposed -- to be taken from the budget sur-
plus -- pales in comparison to other spending items that were part of
the Senate debate yesterday. But a $ 1 billion annual commitment
would bring the United States a considerable distance toward meeting
its part of goals set by the United Nations and other organizations
for funding AIDS prevention and treatment efforts in the world's
poorest countries.

The vast majority of people infected with the human immunodeficiency
virus, which causes AIDS, live in sub-Saharan Africa -- 25 million of
a global total of 36 million. Worldwide deaths from the pandemic to-
tal 22 million, more than 3 million of whom succumbed last year at a
rate of 8,000 per day. "By 2010, as many as 80 million persons or
more could be dead of AIDS," Frist said in introducing the amendment
yesterday.

Frist, who chairs the Foreign Relations subcommittee on African af-
fairs and is a physician, has become the Senate's leading advocate
for increased AIDS spending. Co-sponsors of the amendment were Sens.
Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), Richard J. Durbin
(D-Ill.), John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.).

Pressure on wealthy nations to increase AIDS funding has grown as ma-
jor pharmaceutical companies have offered the recommended three-drug
anti-retroviral treatment, which costs at least $ 10,000 per patient
per year in this country, for as little as $ 500 to Africa's poorest
countries. Generic manufacturers have offered even lower prices,
leading the major companies to fear infringement on their intellec-
tual property rights.

The disease is believed to have progressed to a critical stage in at
least 3 million people in Africa, making them optimum candidates for
the drugs under current guidelines. Only about 10,000 sub-Saharan Af-
ricans currently receive them.

The United Nations has estimated that basic prevention and care in
Africa will cost at least $ 3 billion a year, increasing to $ 5 bil-
lion with access to the drugs, Frist said. Other projections have put
the annual cost between $ 7 billion and $ 15 billion.

Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan met in Geneva yesterday
with CEOs and senior executives of six of the world's leading pharma-
ceutical companies -- Abbott Laboratories, Boehringer Ingelheim,
Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Hoffman-LaRoche and Pfizer --
to discuss further steps on drug pricing and access. Following agree-
ments between the United Nations and several companies last year,
five African countries -- Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Senegal and
Uganda -- contracted with them to buy price-slashed anti-retrovirals.

Describing the global AIDS fight as "my personal priority," Annan
said the companies were playing "a crucial role" in new research and
providing access and that he supported protection of property rights.

"However, the solution does not lie with the pharmaceutical companies
alone," Annan said. "I am calling for a major mobilization -- of po-
litical will and significant additional funding -- to enable a dra-
matic leap forward in prevention, education, care and treatment."

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