The UK government is to provide an extra £116m of funding to two key UN agencies working to control the global AIDS pandemic over the next four years, the international development secretary, Hilary Benn, announced at a UNAIDS press conference in London today.
£36m will go to UNAIDS, with the other £80m going to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
The British cash for the UNFPA will fill the hole left when the US government diverted funding on ideological grounds in 2002.
Additional UNAIDS funding is being provided to support the “Three Ones” initiative, which aims to provide resource limited countries with an effective model for the national coordination of their HIV prevention, treatment and care programmes by using one national HIV plan, one national AIDS authority, and one monitoring and evaluating method.
Describing how the additional money for UNFPA will help the fight against AIDS Mr Benn said, “sexual and reproductive health are inextricably linked. By taking action against one, we know that we are also helping to tackle the other.”
The extra funding to UNFPA will be used to for HIV prevention work with young people and women, better access to condoms, and better integration of sexual and reproductive health services and HIV programmes.
”Far too many women in developing countries live with painful, disabling and hidden injuries and illnesses because they are denied their rights to sexual and reproductive health," said Mr Benn, adding, “529,000 women die each year from pregnancy and childbirth related illnesses. Last year over 1 million women died of AIDS. In sub-Saharan Africa teenage girls are five times more likely to contract HIV than teenage boys.”
Interestingly, the £20m a year additional funding which the UK is providing to UNFPA makes up the money which the US government has been withholding from the UN agency since the summer of 2002. In July 2002 the Bush administration diverted $34m of funding allocated to UNFPA to US aid programmes. The move came after religious conservatives lobbied the administration claiming that UNFPA money was being used to support the one child only policy in China and non-consensual sterilisations and abortions, allegations vigorously denied by UNFPA. Attempts to restore the funding in the US congress have failed.
Although Hilary Benn made no reference to US policy, Dr Peter Piot of UNAIDS repeatedly endorsed the importance of condoms in preventing the global spread of AIDS. What’s more he said that US policy was now far too concerned with abstinence and questioned the value of the “ABC” prevention approach (abstain, be faithful, use a condom) to the HIV epidemic in Africa, which is increasingly affecting women, many of whom are married. Dr Piot asked, “How can a married woman demand abstinence, control the pre-marital or extra-marital sexual activity of her husband, or demand that condoms be used?”
Hilary Benn also announced that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, would be announcing a new UK strategy for tackling HIV in resource limited countries later in July 2004.