Ireland steps up aid to AIDS sufferers

Ireland has become the world's third largest purchaser of AIDS drugs following the signing of a partnership between the Government and the aid foundation started by the former US president Mr Bill Clinton.

The only two countries who spend more on anti-retroviral drugs are the US and Brazil, where the majority of these drugs are for domestic use.

Speaking at the signing ceremony of the partnership agreement with the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, this morning, Mr Clinton paid tributes to the Government for becoming the first in the world to publicly pledge its support to helping his foundation to provide anti-retroviral drugs to fight AIDS/HIV in Africa.

The partnership between the Government and the William Jefferson Clinton Investment Foundation, will see Ireland contributing €40 million next year towards fighting AIDS/HIV in Mozambique. The fund will help the Mozambique government to increase access for treatment in a country where 15 per cent of the population is infected with the virus but only a few hundred people are receiving proper medication.

Within a few years, the foundation hopes to be able to provide treatment for up to 500,000 people in the country.

Seventy per cent of the world's 42 million AIDS/HIV sufferers are in Africa, but only 40,000 of the six million people who need them are receiving the correct medication, Mr Clinton noted. What is needed is a "dramatic increase in consciousness" in the US and the rest of the world about the crisis.

AIDS is "the greatest development challenge of the 21st century", Mr Ahern said, but the "lower cost and greater availability of life-saving anti-retroviral drugs now means the treatment of AIDS can become a reality for people in poorer countries."

The Taoiseach defended the Government against criticism levelled by the chairman of the Catholic aid agency Trocaire, Bishop John Kirby, this morning. Dr Kirby called on the Government to increase its contribution to overseas development assistance.

The Government pledged in 2000 to earmark 0.7 per cent of GDP for foreign aid by 2007. This figure currently stands at 0.41 per cent or €450 million per year, Mr Ahern. "I don't see that we've any case to answer," the Taoiseach countered.

Mr Clinton also jumped to Mr Ahern's defence. "Almost no country is doing as well", Mr Clinton said, and the Government is streets ahead of the US administration, which would probably still "dead last" in terms of percentage spent on aid even if it doubled its current spend.

The former president denied that his interest in AIDS was politically motivated and that he had jumped on the coattails of civilian activists like Bono. He paid tribute to the U2 singer, who was "immensely helpful" to him and who is an "enormously gifted person politically".

"But you have to remember, when I first became president, the US had the world's biggest AIDS problem," he said, so he was not new to fighting the disease. He also wouldn't discount the efforts of his successor as US President, Mr George W. Bush, "just because Bono was there first".