"I'm proud of the progress Romania has been making during these last years in fighting against HIV/AIDS," she said while in Bucharest for a seminar on treating AIDS patients.

"For about seven years, Romania is trying to fight AIDS and in many ways, it is a success story. I could even say that pediatric AIDS is not a problem anymore in Romania. From this point of view, this country is an example," Albright said.

Romanian Health Minister Ovidiu Branzan said more than 5,000 people were getting anti-retrovirus medicines for free, while only 30 received such help in 1997. He said this progress was due to a government partnership with US drug companies Merck and Sharp et Dohme.

Romania has 4,591 cases of AIDS, according to official statistics.

"In public hospitals about 46 percent of patients were HIV-positive," the Saturday Star quoted the report as saying.

The report was leaked to the paper and was based on an in-depth study during 2002 under the direction of Olive Shisana, executive director of the Human Sciences Research Council's programme on the social aspects of HIV/AIDS.

"Aspects of the report's finding were discussed at least year's AIDS conference (in the port city of Durban), but the government has so far refused to release the full 175-page report," the paper said.

"The research has found that AIDS patients have started 'crowding out' other patients from hospitals as the impact of AIDS is increasingly taking its toll on both health workers and health facilities."

About 5.3 million South Africans in a population of 44.8 million are infected with HIV or AIDS, a higher rate than any other country.

"The finding that almost half of the patients admitted to hospital are HIV infected, demonstrates the massive increase in the burden placed on health care facilities," the Saturday Star said.

"This meant that almost half the usual number of beds were no longer available to other patients."

In addition, HIV-positive or AIDS patients tended to stay in hospital for longer with an average of 13.7 days, compared to 8.2 days for non-HIV patients.

The report warned the government to train more nurses, as up to 16 percent of health workers were likely to die from AIDS between 2002 and 2007, while some 29 percent of all deaths of health workers were attributable to AIDS.

Van Rensberg said his invention, the Porta-morgue, was basically an insulated coffin with a cooling unit, adding that it was prompted by the growing number of AIDS deaths.

About 5.3 million South Africans in a population of 44.8 million are infected with HIV or AIDS, a higher rate than any other country.

"(It) has good insulation and is relatively cheap to operate," he said, adding that a body could be preserved for up to a month at a temperature of 4 degrees Celsius (39 degrees Fahrenheit).

While being transported, the coffin can be switched off for 12 hours without the body spoiling, he said.

The invention won van Rensberg a design award from the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS).

Adrienne Viljoen, manager of the SABS Design Institute, said the product "demonstrates the down-to-earth practicality of how to preserve your loved one until burial."

The long-awaited announcement was universally welcomed after years of controversial debate about the science of HIV/AIDS, but now activists are unhappy about further delays.

South Africa has the highest caseload of HIV in the world, with an estimated 5.3 million of its 45 million population HIV-positive.

"It is unjustifiable, not acceptable, that in almost February 2004 it is not happening (provision of drug) anywhere outside the Western Cape province," TAC National Treasurer Mark Heywood told reporters in Cape Town.

"We are very concerned about what we see as totally unjustified delays in drug procurement... We believe this is costing peoples' lives," he added.

Heywood, speaking after a meeting of the group's national executive committee, said the TAC commended the government for "biting the bullet" and agreeing to roll-out drugs, but it now had to implement that strategy more urgently.

The TAC, whose members often clashed with health officials on the state's AIDS policy, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for its campaign for free treatment.

Heywood said there was no justification for failing to provide at least enough medicines for those people targeted by the program for treatment by the end of the financial year.

Mbeki's government originally allocated 270 million rand ($38 million) for treatment up to the end of the financial year to the end of March 2004. That has since dropped to 90 million rand, and the department of health has indicated drug procurement will not begin before next month.

Heywood said there appeared to be a lack of urgency and political commitment to implement the program.

Mbeki and other officials have in the past questioned the severity of South Africa's AIDS crisis, as well as the efficacy of AIDS drugs and even the widely accepted link between AIDS and the HIV virus.

The TAC will convene a conference in late March or early April -- in the shadow of a general election whose date has yet to be announced -- to discuss the roll-out of ARVs and the poor state of the country's public health system.

AIDS is expected to be a hot topic in the run-up to the election, likely in March or April, with opposition parties having accused the government of using the announcement of the roll-out of drugs as an election ploy.

By MICHAEL NORTON, Associated Press Writer

THOMONDE, Haiti - Seven years ago, most children in this town had the orange hair and swollen bellies of the chronically underfed, and only 20 percent were immunized against childhood diseases.

Now, they get hot school lunches and have access to a well-equipped clinic thanks to a partnership of the Haitian Health Ministry, U.S. humanitarian groups and the University of Miami.

"This is a model of what a U.S. medical school can do," said Dr. Arthur Fournier, co-founder of Project Medishare and a University of Miami professor.

Its tin-roofed houses sprawling over a plateau, the town of 38,000 people is a three-hour drive from the capital on a rutted road.

Most residents don't have jobs and the nearest hospital is hours away.

"Old and young, people wasted away and died. It was too late to save them when they got to the nearest hospital," said a former mayor, Jean Delva Souverne, who appealed to the University of Miami for help.

Thomonde's slow recovery started when Souverne asked the university for a generator. When the school agreed in 1996, it sent a team to the town and discovered the extent of its problems.

"We all would have died if it had not been for Medishare," said Archillean Saint-Louis, a 60-year-old farmer whose wife and six children all had tuberculosis about a year ago.

Project Medishare turned a dilapidated dispensary that was seeing fewer than 10 patients a day into a bustling clinic where two Haitian doctors, two nurses and a laboratory technician treat more than l00 patients a day.

The project also developed a partnership with Harvard professor Paul Farmer's Partners in Health HIV/AIDS treatment center in nearby Cange to train 48 health workers who go door-to-door in the area searching for illness and making sure patients take prescribed medicines.

Such visits have also led to more than 96 percent of children under 5 being immunized.

At least 200 people have been saved over the past two years, estimates Fournier, whose group plans to build a 15-bed hospital.

Hunger is being tackled with a hot lunch program provided by World Vision, a U.S.-based Christian aid group.

Still, the medical situation in the Central Plateau district where Thomonde and several other towns are situated remains serious.

Thirty-three percent of Thomonde's people are malnourished, compared to 11 percent in the plateau's other towns. Thomonde's mortality rate for children under 5 is 187 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to 89 in the other towns — and 8 in the United States, and 4 in Sweden.

"We are not medical missionaries. We are committed to sustained medical care assumed by Haitians themselves," said Medishare's other co-founder, Barth Green, another University of Miami medical professor.

Every year, some 50 first- and second-year University of Miami medical students come to Haiti and work with Project Medishare, which last February received a three-year grant of $750,000 from the Miami-based Green Family Foundation.

Fournier said the relationships he and the students have formed in Thomonde are one of the most rewarding aspects of the job. "Haiti is doing more for us than we are doing for Haiti," he said.

He arrived in Haiti on his 98th visit in November, with more than a dozen doctors, health care experts and development specialists on a trip financed by the Green Family Foundation.

University of Miami President Donna Shalala, who was health secretary under President Clinton, also came to see what more can be done.

"We can't solve Haiti's medical problems, but we can develop workable models and train Haitians to implement them," she said.

The planned hospital would cost $400,000 to build, and its yearly operating costs will run about $150,000. If it gets needed funding, it will have an outpatient clinic, facilities for minor surgery, a laboratory, dental office, pharmacy and staff housing.

Claudy Bernard, a 30-year-old Voodoo priest and healer, sends patients to Project Medishare when he cannot heal them with traditional medicine.

"We're partners," Bernard said. "That's what I call progress."

Of the $2.7 billion, an estimated $200 million would go to the Global Fund, down from $550 million in the current year, according an African relief group known as DATA that Irish pop star Bono is associated with.

DATA's executive director, Jamie Drummond, accused the Bush administration of "robbing Peter to pay Paul," and warned that the cutbacks threatened the Global Fund's ability to continue programs already in place, as well as new grants.

The White House said Bush was not backing away from his commitment to support the fund.

"The Global Fund is an important part of the president's plan and there will be a steady and sustained commitment to the Global Fund," a White House official said.

RESULTS, a grass-roots health advocacy organization, said U.S. money should be front-loaded to combat the spreading crisis.

Bush a year ago pledged $15 billion to help combat HIV/AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean -- effectively tripling U.S. spending over five years.

He touted the initiative during a July visit to Africa, where almost 30 million people live with the disease, including 3 million children under the age of 15.

At $2.7 billion, the 2005 budget request would top the $2.4 billion backed by Congress for the current fiscal year.

Bush's AIDS initiative calls for providing anti-viral treatment to HIV people in Africa and the Caribbean who cannot afford it. It would also help children who have lost one or both parents and work toward prevention with programs aimed at sexual abstinence, education and promotion of condom use.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A senior Vatican official on Thursday called for public pressure on pharmaceutical companies to lower the price of drugs to fight the spread of AIDS in poor countries.

"These children are dying because they don't have medicine," Archbishop Paul Cordes, president of the Vatican's charity arm Cor Unum, told reporters. "There should be public pressure to convince drugs companies to lower the prices of drugs to treat the victims of AIDS."

Cordes was speaking to reporters at a Vatican presentation of Pope John Paul's message to Catholics for Lent, which centered on the rights of children.

He said the Vatican had taken a number of public and private initiatives to put pressure on big companies that make drugs.

"It seems important to me to ask you in the media to show the suffering of children," he said.

A number of companies have bowed to pressure to improve access to life-saving antiretroviral medicines in Africa and other parts of the developing world where AIDS has hit hardest.

The government of South Africa, which has the world's single highest HIV/AIDS caseload with around five million people infected, has taken an increasingly tough stance on drug pricing.

By Oliver Bullough

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Tuberculosis, long ago subdued by Western doctors, is not only rampant in Russia but increasingly mutating into terrifying new forms that even the most powerful new medicines cannot kill.

It is spreading among the country's most vulnerable groups: around one in 10 prisoners in Russia's jails has it, and among homeless people the rate is broadly similar.

And post-Soviet medical mismanagement, many doctors say, has already allowed the contagious, air-borne disease to mutate into strains that cannot be killed by even the most modern medicines.

"The reservoirs of super-resistance will be huge; it will be impossible to treat," said Andrei Slavutsky of the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). MSF was so disgusted by official refusal to adopt treatment techniques backed by the World Health Organization (WHO) that it ended its tuberculosis program in Siberian prisons.

The Soviet Union developed an effective if cumbersome anti-TB program using mass tests to catch the disease early. The totalitarian system ensured that the population did what health authorities wanted.

But the fall of communism starved the system of cash and robbed it of its ability to control patients, and an explosive epidemic followed its failure to adapt.

The WHO estimates that TB in Russia has risen threefold since 1991 and predicts an epidemic among HIV-positive Russians whose immune systems are hit by the virus that causes AIDS.

WHO figures put TB prevalence in Russia at 134 cases per 100,000 people compared with six per 100,000 in Norway, 12 in Britain and five in the United States.

"People need good living conditions, to be well fed and to work. The problem is 85 percent social and only 15 percent medical," said Mikhail Perelman, Russia's top TB expert.

NOT ENOUGH

Some doctors think medical authorities have not only been slow in fighting the epidemic, but that action has been so inappropriate as to be harmful.

Multi-drug-resistant (MDR) TB can be treated only with expensive modern drugs and is often caused by not ensuring that patients finish a course of treatment. MDR-TB drugs need to be used for longer, are less effective and have more harmful side effects than traditional treatment.

"Lack of resources in the 1990s also led to late diagnosis and ineffective treatment. Insufficient supervision, poor management and low treatment effectiveness led to the growth of MDR-TB," said Wieslaw Jakubowiak, the WHO's TB control program coordinator in Russia.

WHO figures show MDR-TB running as high as one in 10 new TB cases among the general population in some regions and almost as high as one in five in the prisons. "This situation needs to be immediately addressed," said Jakubowiak.

Many doctors say Russia is now incorrectly using modern drugs -- the last line of defense against MDR-TB -- allowing the disease to mutate to survive those as well.

Zulfira Kornilova, deputy director of an institute in a forest outside Moscow which treats Russia's most serious TB cases, said her experts were picking up terrifying rates of super-resistant strains.

"There is now a group of patients who do not respond to any medicine. It is maybe 15-20 percent of all those who have MDR-TB," she said.

"But there are no exact figures for super-resistant forms, because the laboratories do not have the right equipment and are not clean enough."

CONSERVATISM

Partly to improve these diagnosis rates, the World Bank is lending Russia $150 million. Like many foreign initiatives the agreement was held up for years by Russian reluctance to modify tried and tested practices.

Perelman said that despite the growth of MDR-TB, he resented interference, adding that the Russian system was best suited to the country.

"Imagine what would happen if I came to the United States or England and started to work whatever way I wanted? They would put me in prison," he said.

The WHO says Russia is now closely approaching internationally acknowledged standards and has put the disease at the top of its agenda, but for many doctors the change is coming far too late.

"There is already massive supply of second-line drugs going on, but without clear guidelines explaining how to use them efficiently this is absolutely criminal," said MSF's Slavutsky.

"Use of second-line drugs in this situation will stimulate the creation and spread of super-resistance."

By Shapi Shacinda

LUSAKA, Zambia (Reuters) - The United States will give Zambia $66 million this year to fight HIV/AIDS, including buying anti-retroviral drugs to prolong the lives of thousands of poor sufferers, Washington's top envoy in the country said Monday.

The southern African country has one of the world's highest HIV/AIDS rates, with an estimated one in five people infected and more than 800,000 children orphaned by the pandemic.

U.S. Ambassador Martin Brennan told Reuters in an interview that Washington would release about $15 million in the next few weeks. The balance would be made available by July, with more to follow if it was well spent.

"Zambia is going to receive $66 million this year... This is fast-track money to maximize the fight against HIV/AIDS," Brennan said.

"We are (going) to work with Zambians to educate people about AIDS, to enable those infected with HIV to have access to treatment. We want to reach 200,000 Zambians in the next two years."

He said 55 percent of the funds would be used to buy anti-retroviral drugs, which would be distributed free to those unable to afford the life-prolonging drugs.

He said the money would come from President Bush's $15 billion Emergency AIDS Fund targeting 14 Third World countries, 12 of them in Africa.

Critics of Bush's AIDS policy say much of the money will go straight to Western pharmaceutical companies rather than buying cheaper locally produced generic drugs.

Embassy staff could not say where the drugs would be bought.

"The (U.S) government is currently working out guidelines and a mechanism for buying the AIDS drugs... We will only know after two to three weeks where the drugs will be bought," Public Affairs Officer James Greene said.

AIM TO SLOW SPREAD OF AIDS

Western-produced antiretrovirals can cost between $300 and $1,000 a month in Zambia, where most of the country's 10 million people live on less than a dollar a day.

Brennan said the United States, which has given $75 million to Zambia over the past six years to fight AIDS, would aim to give poor countries funds quicker to help slow down the spread of the incurable disease.

Only 8,000 Zambians receive free AIDS drugs under a government project initially meant to reach 100,000 people.

Zambia's Treasury, facing a donor freeze over its budget deficit, said last year the country could not train professional staff quickly enough to replace those dying from AIDS, especially in education and agriculture.

"AIDS statistics don't tell the story, it's the people suffering from and dying of AIDS ... it's a personal human tragedy," Brennan said, adding that some funds would be used to train doctors and nurses to administer the anti-retroviral drugs.

Brennan said Zambia's allocation would be increased in 2005 if the country could show that the initial funds had been well-spent. He gave no further details.

LONDON (AFP) - Britain has promised India 123 million pounds (180 million euros, 223 million dollars) to help contain the spread of HIV/AIDS.

"We are funding the National Aids Control Organisation of India to the tune of 123 million pounds and are working with it closely on the design of a more effective strategy," Britain's parliamentary secretary for international development, Gareth Thomas, was quoted as saying by Saturday's edition of the Financial Times (FT).

The money comes as part of a package set to reach 300 million pounds by the end of 2004, the FT said Saturday.

With more than 4.6 million HIV-infected people, India has the second-highest rate of HIV infections in the world after South Africa.