*EPF509 06/30/00
U.S. Significant Contributor to Worldwide HIV/AIDS Battle, Expert Says
(FHI's Lamptey comments before Durban meeting) (1210)
By Jim Fisher-Thompson
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- The scourge of HIV/AIDS is a major problem in developed nations where victims try to stave off the deadly illness with expensive drugs, but in a country like Zimbabwe, where even basic treatment is unaffordable and where 700 AIDS victims now die weekly, it is a catastrophe that American leaders may appreciate better than African leaders, says Dr. Peter Lamptey, a Ghanaian-born physician and AIDS public health specialist.
Dr. Lamptey is senior vice president of Family Health International (FHI), a large non-governmental organization (NGO) and prime contractor overseeing the "Implementing AIDS Prevention and Care (IMPACT) Project." Established in 1997 IMPACT is the U.S. government's chief foreign assistance program to countries battling the deadly virus. The U.S. project operates AIDS education and prevention programs in 40 nations, 19 of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Lamptey, who spoke to a Washington File reporter on June 26 at FHI headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, said "there is no doubt that the United States is the most important contributor to international health programs, but more so for HIV/AIDS."
According to the State Department, the U.S. government is the largest country to country donor of HIV/AIDS assistance. Over the past 10 years it has invested more than $1,000 million in more than 75 countries.
Lamptey said "we estimate that roughly $550 million is spent [annually] on HIV/AIDS prevention and care programs in developing countries. Roughly half of this is provided by the developing countries themselves. And last year [1999] the United States spent over $142 million, which is over half of the total spent in the developing world by the donor nations."
This is a "pretty significant figure," he stated, adding that "even though the amount of money that is needed is estimated to be closer to three thousand million to four thousand million dollars, the U.S. is by far the country that is making the greatest difference in the control of HIV/AIDS worldwide.
"Everyone is now realizing," Lamptey said, "that unless the world makes an effort to put some money into this problem now, it's actually going to worsen the development prospects of most of these countries. AIDS is not simply a health problem, it's now reversing most of the developmental gains that have been made in the last 25 years."
Lamptey made his comments as preparations continue for the Thirteenth International AIDS Conference to be held in Durban, South Africa, from July 9-14. He will lead 90 people from FHI who will be among 400 U.S. government officials and NGO officials attending the event. The meeting's theme is to be "Break the Silence," which is an acknowledgement of the stigma of silence that still surrounds the disease.
Part of that silence is born of a neglect by some African leaders who have not taken the AIDS pandemic seriously enough, he said. While Senegal and Uganda are success stories when it comes to AIDS education and prevention programs, most African nations have not been so aggressive or forthcoming in combating the disease, he said.
"Actually, a major point that I will be making in my presentation in Durban," Lamptey said, is that "one has to look at the political leadership and commitment by African countries to the problem. And I must say that compared to the past four or five years, there are more African leaders now talking about the disease and committing their own resources to battling AIDS."
A number of administration figures have spoken out about the growing HIV/AIDS crisis. Vice President Al Gore pointed to the importance of the upcoming Durban conference in a speech to the U.N. Security Council last January. Gore, who has visited sub-Saharan Africa four times the past seven years, pledged that "we will work with the organizers of the Durban Conference to advance this essential objective. It is essential, because how we speed the money, and how effectively we target it, not just how much we spend, will determine how many lives we save."
U.S. Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke, who was instrumental in convening a special meeting of the Security Council on the growing AIDS crisis last March, told Congress that "we should be proud that the U.S. is the largest donor of international development assistance for HIV/AIDS."
Pointing out that the U.S. had allotted about $342 million to fight the pandemic overseas in 2000, Holbrooke added that "we recognize that that's not enough. In the coming months, we look forward to working with many of you to seek higher levels of support by all donors. And we will continue to work through diplomatic channels to energize our G-8 colleagues, UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, the World Bank and other international organizations, the private sector, as well as the leaders of every country in the world to improve coordination and bring more financial and political commitment to this global fight."
According to Sandy Thurman, director of the White House office of national AIDS policy whom President Clinton sent to Africa twice last year on fact-finding missions, the centerpiece of the U.S. war on AIDS overseas is an initiative called the "Leadership and Investment in Fighting an Epidemic (LIFE)" program. FHI's IMPACT project is implementing some of the LIFE programs.
Started in 1999 with $100 million in funding, LIFE has focused on India and those countries in sub-Saharan Africa with the most severe AIDS problems. A report on the disease recently issued by the United Nations noted that of the 34 million infected with the killer virus, 25 million are in Africa, which is about three times higher than the number disease experts predicted in 1991.
Impelled by the urgency of fighting a disease the U.N. report says could undo decades of economic progress in the developing world, the U.S. government has initiated a number of other HIV/AIDS assistance programs overseas including:
-- the State Department's global initiative on AIDS launched in March 1999 that instructs U.S. ambassadors to raise the profile of the threat and foster political commitment amongst foreign governments to fight the disease;
-- grants to UNAIDS that totaled $15 million in 1999 to coordinate U.N. agency activities to prevent the spread of the disease;
-- U.S. funding, mainly through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that has educated more than 15 million people in high risk countries about the threat of AIDS, as well as sexually transmitted infections (STI), and helped train 150,000 others in AIDS prevention programs;
-- the distribution of more than 5,000 million condoms overseas by USAID;
-- research on AIDS, including seeking a possible vaccine, by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which also supports 2,500 research projects at some 500 institutions worldwide; and
-- the U.S. military HIV Research Program that is directed toward the prevention of HIV/AIDS among soldiers, both U.S. and allied militaries. Approximately $8.5 million in the project's annual budget supports overseas research programs.
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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