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New plans tackle AIDS in Asia

Two migrant workers buy condoms at a recently installed vending machine with an AIDS warning attached to it outside the Huashan hospital in Shanghai last Friday. PHOTO: AFP

Former US President Bill Clinton and Australia announced plans yesterday to combat AIDS in China, Vietnam and Papua New Guinea, warning that 40 percent of all new infections could be in the Asia-Pacific region by 2010.

Australia, through its main aid arm AusAID, and the Clinton Foundation signed a memorandum of understanding under which Australia would contribute A$25 million (US$18.5 million) over the next four years.

The money would be supplemented by an undisclosed amount from Clinton's foundation and would be used to make anti-retroviral drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS more readily available and to improve testing and monitoring systems in the three countries.

Clinton said the partnership would focus in part on providing treatment for children infected with the disease in Vietnam and Papua New Guinea.

He said about 500,000 children died of AIDS around the world last year.

"The idea that these children are dying like flies and people like us, with the money we have, are walking away from them and not keeping them alive is inexcusable," Clinton told a business forum in Sydney.

Clinton's foundation has recently announced HIV/AIDS programs in India, the second-worst affected nation after South Africa, as well as with nine drug companies to help cut the cost of testing and treatment in 50 developing countries.

"There is clearly a moral imperative to do something about this," Clinton said.

"There are places in Africa, and indeed there are villages in rural China, where there are no young adults left," he said.

"There is medicine which stops transmission to children of pregnant women about 100 percent of the time," he said. "And finally there are anti-retrovirals which will give almost all children and adults a normal lifespan if they're given as part of an overall health plan."

Under its HIV/AIDS initiative, the Clinton Foundation acts as a broker between drug makers and the governments of around 50 of the poorest countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Clinton announced last month that his foundation had negotiated major price discounts on AIDS tests and drugs with nine companies from five countries, including India and China.

About 25,000 people died from AIDS in China last year. Last month, Beijing lowered its estimate of the number of people living with HIV/AIDS by about 30 percent to 650,000, although AusAID and UNAIDS estimates put the number at 800,000.

Vietnam, China and Indonesia face the fastest-growing HIV epidemic in the world.

Papua New Guinea, to Australia's north, faces an epidemic of similar proportions.
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