Article: New U.S. Funding Will Help Latin America, Caribbean Fight HIV/AIDS

04 April 2002

Article: New U.S. Funding Will Help Latin America, Caribbean Fight HIV/AIDS

USAID to provide additional $162 million in HIV/AIDS prevention

Washington -- The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will provide almost $162 million in new funding over the next five years to help countries in the Americas and worldwide expand HIV/AIDS prevention, patient care and HIV/AIDS mitigation programs.

In an April 3 statement, USAID said it has awarded the new funding to Family Health International (FHI) and its partners to continue an AIDS Prevention and Care project in developing countries around the world. FHI, a non-governmental organization based in North Carolina, works in 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean on AIDS-prevention projects.

USAID said that as the HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to ravage many developing countries, this five-year extension of funding to FHI will allow the organization to continue its work without disruption. USAID first awarded FHI $148 million in 1997 to implement AIDS programs in 40 countries worldwide.

Peter Lamptey, president of FHI's AIDS Institute, hailed the new funding, saying it allows his organization's prevention-and-care intervention programs "greater freedom to work with implementing agencies to improve their capacity to respond to the world's hardest-hit areas."

Anne Peterson, assistant administrator of USAID's Bureau for Global Health, said that with the U.S. government forming partnerships with such groups as FHI, "we can and will turn this pandemic around." FHI currently works in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela.

USAID says about 1.4 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean have HIV/AIDS, with the Caribbean region having the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS outside of sub-Saharan Africa. Some 2.2 percent of the Caribbean population has HIV/AIDS, compared to 8.4 percent in sub-Saharan Africa. About 0.7 percent of the U.S. population has the disease, USAID said.

USAID has HIV/AIDS programs in over 50 countries around the world. Under the Bush administration's "Third Border Initiative," the United States is providing $20 million in HIV/AIDS funding to Latin America and the Caribbean in fiscal year 2002. The administration developed the Third Border Initiative to deepen its cooperation with countries in the hemisphere in fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS, responding to natural disasters, and making sure the benefits of globalization are spread to large and small countries alike.