By Adam Entous

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush will propose $3.2 billion for next year to combat the spread of AIDS globally, one of the few increases in what is expected to be a tight foreign aid budget, administration and congressional sources said on Friday.

Administration officials said Bush was fulfilling his commitments on AIDS funding, but critics charged the funding levels were inadequate.

In his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush pledged $15 billion over five years to help combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, mostly in Africa and the Caribbean.

"It is an extraordinary commitment and we're making good on it in exactly the way we said we would," an administration official said of the $3.2 billion figure.

When the White House announced the initiative, it said the funding would be ramped up over the five-year period.

Congressional sources said the AIDS initiative escaped the fate of most other foreign aid programs in Bush's fiscal 2006 budget, which face a near freeze in spending growth, if not outright cuts.

AIDS activists say Bush's budget request falls short because Congress authorized up to $3.8 billion for 2006. They say Bush should commit closer to $6.7 billion next year, one-third of the estimated global need to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

"We see this as a continuation of Bush's failed leadership on global AIDS by underfunding his own initiative and providing only a fraction of what is needed to stop this epidemic," said Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance.

"We need to treat it like a war, and look at what it takes to win that war," said Joanne Carter, legislative director of RESULTS, a grass-roots health advocacy organization.

At $3.2 billion, the 2006 budget request would top the $2.8 billion approved by Congress for the current fiscal year. The program received $2.4 billion in fiscal 2004.

Bush first proposed that program in March 2002 and pledged $5 billion by 2006. Congress slashed Bush's funding request last year, and eligible countries have yet to receive any money. Madagascar could become the first recipient of funds within weeks, people involved in the deliberations said.

Bush will send his budget plan to Congress on Feb. 7 for the 2006 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

He plans to propose a tight budget that nearly freezes overall growth in discretionary spending. He is also expected to propose cuts to popular benefit programs such as Medicaid. A freeze in growth would amount to a cut when inflation is taken into account.

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

The initiative focuses mainly on the hardest-hit countries, including Botswana, the Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Some Democrats have called for the United States to pledge $30 billion by 2008 -- twice as much as Bush -- for the fight against AIDS. (Additional reporting by Anna Willard)

© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope John Paul on Saturday stressed that the Roman Catholic Church believed abstinence and fidelity within marriage, and not condoms, were the best way to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The Pope's words, spoken to a new ambassador to the Vatican, took on an added significance being his first direct comment on the controversial topic since a Catholic official in Spain this week appeared to question the Church's stand against condoms.

"The Holy See ... believes prevention through education about the sacredness of life and the correct practice of sexuality, that is chastity and faithfulness, is necessary above all other things in order to prevent this disease responsibly," the 84-year old Pontiff said in a written address.

The Church opposes condoms in all except the rarest of circumstances because they are a form of contraception.

It says promoting the use of condoms to fight the spread of AIDS fosters what it sees as immoral and hedonistic lifestyles and behavior that will only contribute to its spread.

The condom debate made the front pages of newspapers around the world this week after Father Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, secretary-general of the Spanish bishops conference, said they could have "a place in the global approach to tackling AIDS."

The next day, the conference effectively retracted his statement saying there had not been any change in the Church's position on the use of condoms.

"At my request, the church has mobilized in favor of the victims and especially in order to assure access to help and the necessary medical care through a number of treatment centers," the Polish Pope said, referring to a Vatican foundation.

The Good Samaritan foundation was founded last year to coordinate funds from charities and organizations helping AIDS victims, particularly in Africa.

The Pope made his comments on AIDS in a welcome address to the new Netherlands ambassador, Monique Frank.

He took the opportunity also to reiterate the Vatican's condemnation of the Netherlands' legalisation of euthanasia.

"The Holy See has made known its clear position and invites Catholics in the Netherlands always to show their absolute respect for human life, from conception to natural death."

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Companies around the world are falling behind in the fight against AIDS, leaving a "black hole" in education and healthcare, experts said on Thursday.

More than 70 percent of companies have no HIV/AIDS strategy of any kind, and only 7 percent have a formal written policy, according to a survey by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Harvard School of Public Health.

"Too few companies are responding proactively to the social and business threats of HIV/AIDS," said Kate Taylor, director of the WEF's Global Health Initiative.

With 40 million people infected by HIV worldwide and new infections spreading at the rate of 14,000 a day, the epidemic has the potential to cripple economies and decimate workforces, hitting the bottom line of many businesses.

Yet the survey of nearly 9,000 corporate leaders in 104 countries found only 14 percent of firms had conducted quantitative HIV/AIDS risk assessments and two-thirds had no idea how prevalent the disease was among their employees.

"We find the report extremely worrying," Kathleen Cravero, Deputy Executive Director of UNAIDS, told Reuters.

"Business leaders don't know and they are not trying to find out ... It is a huge black hole that is missing at a time when we need it most."

FRONTLINE

One in six executives expect AIDS to have a serious impact on their business now or in the future.

But the overall level of concern about the disease has actually dropped by 23 percent in the last 12 months -- perhaps due to "HIV fatigue" or a belief that new institutions, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, will come to the rescue.

Cravero said the decline was alarming because the workplace remained an essential front in tackling HIV/AIDS, since mobile male workers -- including contract miners and truckers -- were the main conduit for spreading the virus in many societies.

"The workplace is a really effective place to get messages across to men and to offer them services," she said.

"Any company that has really taken this seriously and reached out, like Anglo-American <AAL.L> and Heineken <HEIN.AS>, has not only made a difference for their employees but for an entire community."

It is only in the hardest-hit countries, where HIV prevalence rates are above 20 percent of the population, that businesses have become seriously engaged in offering advice and treatment.

Yet across sub-Saharan Africa, even in countries with HIV rates of 10-19 percent, formal AIDS policies remain rare.

There was an even greater absence in China, India, Russia, Nigeria and Ethiopia, the next wave of countries that are predicted to have the largest numbers of new HIV/AIDS cases by 2010, the survey found.

Trevor Neilson, executive director of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, said the idea that business was less worried about AIDS stemmed from flawed survey methodology.

"We don't think businesses are doing enough. But the claim that they are less concerned than a year ago is simply not true," he said.

More than 70 companies had joined his coalition in the last 12 months, he said, taking the total to nearly 200, in a move requiring both cash contributions and a clear AIDS policy.

 

AFP INTERVIEW: Vaccine vital to ending AIDS epidemic despite hurdles NEW DELHI (AFP) - Seth Berkley knows some people think he is shooting for the moon but this has not deterred him from pushing for the discovery of an AIDS vaccine even though the quest is now over two decades old. In fact, the US doctor, founder of the New York-based International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), says a vaccine is the only way to stop what he calls the "greatest plague since the 14th century." "At the end of the day, prevention will not fully work to end the epidemic," Berkley, told AFP in an interview in New Delhi where he met officials to discuss the spread of AIDS in India which has 5.1 million HIV-infected people, the second most in the world after South Africa. "We need a vaccine," said Berkley, a medical doctor specializing in infectious disease epidemiology, who launched IAVI in 1996. The quest for a vaccine is particularly crucial in India where the World Bank has warned the disease could become the single largest cause of death in the nation of more than a billion people by 2033. In India, human trials of a vaccine to focus on the sub-type C of the virus, the most common in the country, are set to begin next month at the National AIDS Research Institute in Pune, west of Bombay. Berkley gets particularly riled by critics who say funds spent on researching a vaccine would be better spent on prevention. In fact, he says it is now more urgent than ever to develop a vaccine because if "we don't get better tools to stop AIDS, the effects on society and on development will be just too horrible." Now around five million people a year or about 14,000 daily get infected with HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, and three million die annually from the illness. Around 38 million worldwide are living with HIV, according to UNAIDS. About 650 million dollars is spent annually by governments and corporations on AIDS vaccine research. Berkley would like to see that double to 1.1 billion dollars. But the sum is still small when set against the 70 billion dollars spent globally each year on total health product research and development. "Behavioural strategies such as ABC -- Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms -- have had an effect (but aren't) adequate to stop the spread" of AIDS globally, he said. "Look for example at all the monogamous women who have practised safe sex in developing countries and get infected by their partners." An AIDS vaccine could protect women before the onset of infection, he said, noting in many nations where there is the greatest level of infection "women are generally not able to make decisions about their own reproductive health." "In countries where heterosexual sex is the chief mode of HIV transmission, women's vulnerability to the virus often stems not from their own actions but from those of others," he said. The search for a vaccine has been going on since the first case of AIDS was diagnosed in 1981. Researchers immediately started looking for a vaccine to immunise people against the illness as they had done for polio, smallpox and other diseases. But the quest turned into what Berkley said was a "greater challenge than medical science imagined when pursuit of this goal began." So what makes it so tough? The virus constantly mutates and nobody has devised yet a vaccine that will trigger the immune system to produce antibodies able to eliminate the AIDS virus before it infects the body, scientists say. Besides the planned trials in India, others are underway against different virus strains in the US, Europe, Africa and South America. Over 20 potential AIDS vaccines have been developed worldwide but the lone one to reach large-scale testing failed in clinical trials in 2003 in North America and Thailand. Scientists believe a vaccine is at least a decade away. But even a partially effective vaccine could have a big effect in curbing HIV's spread, Berkley said, citing a study funded by the World Bank and European Commission suggesting a vaccine with 50 percent efficacy could cut new infections by up to 60 percent. He said governments must boost contributions for developing a vaccine as drug companies and charitable groups cannot be expected to do all the research. "Vaccines are not the most profitable types of products as it's not a drug people take daily so there's not such an incentive (for drug firms)," he said. "There's not the market drive" to "invest the large amount of capital needed." Does he ever get discouraged? He says he cannot afford to given the need for "to protect those who are not yet (infected)." "Science is extremely difficult. Without effort, well never break the problem. We've lots of promising information that suggests a vaccine is possible."

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