Bush Pledges $500M For AIDS Effort

President Bush pledged $500 million Wednesday to help fight the spread of AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. But activists say far more was needed from Washington to counter the pandemic sweeping the developing world.

The money would go to programs aimed at preventing mother-to-child transmission of the virus, which generally can be stopped with a regimen of drugs. Some 95 percent of the estimated 40 million HIV/AIDS sufferers live in developing countries, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

"Medical science gives us the power to save these young lives. Conscience demands we do so," Mr. Bush said. He called on other world leaders to help "save children from disease and death."

Administration and congressional sources said the new U.S. funds would be doled out in increments, starting this fiscal year with $200 million -- the amount approved by the Senate as part of an emergency spending bill. The remaining $300 million would be spread over fiscal years 2003 and 2004 and would be provided to African and Caribbean nations where AIDS is spreading fast.

The administration says it already spends close to $1 billion a year in support of global efforts to combat AIDS, which kills more than 5,000 Africans daily.

Two million women infected with HIV become pregnant each year around the world, most of them in poor countries. Between one-quarter and one-third transmit the disease to their newborns either during labor or while breast-feeding. That translates into 2,000 new AIDS-infected infants each day — a statistic that alarms public health officials and cripples the countries' ability to develop their economies, a senior White House official said. More than 8,000 people around the world die of AIDS each day.

The right medication regimen has been shown to significantly reduce the risk of HIV-positive pregnant women passing on the virus to their children.

The money Mr. Bush is pledging is designed only to address mother-to-child transmission in eight African countries and the Caribbean. Eventually, the program would expand to include a dozen countries in Africa, officials said.

"Today I call on other industrialized nations and international organizations to joint this crucial effort to save children from disease and death," Bush said.

In committing $500 million, Mr. Bush is following the lead of Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, a frequent critic of foreign aid who surprised AIDS activists in March by announcing that he would press for more money to stem the pandemic in his last year in Congress. Helms, the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is retiring in January.

"I'm pleased that the administration is proposing to increase funding for efforts to fight the global AIDS epidemic," said Senate Health Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat.

Kennedy and Republican Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee plan to introduce legislation this week that would clear the way for U.S. health agencies to take a more active role globally in AIDS research and training.

But advocacy groups said Bush's $500 million program was too narrowly tailored to help in the broader fight against the spread of AIDS.

"The fact is that the U.S. has ample resources to help fight global AIDS; yet, sadly, the president still seems unprepared to show real leadership," said Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance.

The alliance has urged the administration to commit $2.5 billion as part of a global effort to treat AIDS patients, prevent its spread, care for orphans and train doctors.

That would cover about one-third of the $7 billion to $10 billion a year that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan estimates is needed to wage an effective global battle against AIDS.

Annan championed the idea of a global fund to fight AIDS, which became a reality last year and handed out its first round of grants in April. But pledges to date total only about $2 billion, and even this money is expected to trickle in from donors over several years' time.

The AIDS initiative fits into a wider effort by Mr. Bush to improve Washington's image around the world as it wages its war against terrorism.

In March, Mr. Bush proposed a grant program that would, subject to congressional approval, provide $10 billion in aid from 2004 to 2006 to poor countries that combat corruption and open their markets.

Despite the big increase, the United States would still lag well behind the European Union and Japan in the aid donor stakes.

Zeitz said the AIDS proposal was "grossly under-financed," and said that Mr. Bush would "embarrass" the United States when he presents it next week to the leaders of the world's richest nations.

"That the president still lacks a real program to deepen debt cancellation for countries devastated by AIDS and other crises makes the G7 meeting doubly embarrassing," he added.

Zeitz and other critics have accused Mr. Bush of undermining legislation in Congress that would provide far more funding for the fight against AIDS.

A leading proposal by Frist, one of Mr. Bush's closest Senate allies, called for increasing U.S. spending to combat AIDS around the world from $1 billion to more than $2 billion annually over the next two years.

Earlier this month, the Senate voted to include $200 million in funding for global efforts to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria -- far less than the $500 million it had been widely expected to approve.

Before the vote, critics claim, the Bush administration piled pressure on lawmakers to reduce the size of the package, citing budget constraints.