Bernard J. Durkan
Ceist:162 Mr. Durkan asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the extent to which the international community has been successful in its efforts to curtail the spread of AIDS-HIV through the UN AIDS programme. [27824/00]
Written Answers. - Overseas Development Aid.
The UN millennium summit in September adopted the target that by 2015 UN member states will have "halted and begun to reverse the spread of HIV-AIDS, the scourge of malaria and other major diseases that affect humanity"– paragraph 19, millennium summit declaration.
Already, according to UNAIDS statistics, 18.8 million people around the world have died of AIDS, 3.8 million of them children. Nearly twice that many, 34.3 million, are now living with the HIV virus. The most recent UNAIDS-WHO estimates show that, in 1999 alone, 5.4 million people were newly infected with HIV – four million of those in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Altogether, there are now 16 countries in sub-Saharan Africa in which more than one-tenth of the adult population aged 15-49 is infected with HIV. In seven countries, all in the southern cone of the continent, at least one adult in five is living with the virus.
Clearly, these statistics show that it will be a major challenge to reach the target adopted by the UN secretary general at the millennium summit. However, the international community is undertaking a number of initiatives to address the unprecedented scale of this problem. The special UN General Assembly session on AIDs in June 2001 will act as a focus for global attention to revitalise the fight against AIDS-HIV. The European Union has recently adopted a new policy on Accelerated Action Against HIV-AIDS and other communicable diseases. This complements the work already under way by UNAIDS, and the WHO through its massive effort initiative. The World Bank has also recently decided to give $500 million to addressing the spread of HIV/AIDs in poorest countries.
In the case of our own development co-operation programme, the Minister of State recently announced an allocation of £4 million by Ireland Aid for HIV-AIDS programmes. We have also increased our contribution to UNAIDs from £75,000 in 1999 to £250,000 in 2000. The projects to be funded include initiatives in Zimbabwe, Lesotho and for research into a new HIV-AIDS vaccine. In the context of the Government's decision to reach the UN target of 0.7% of GNP on ODA by 2007, we are also looking at the possibilities for a greater financial involvement by Ireland Aid in the current international and national initiatives against communicable diseases, particularly HIV-AIDS. This issue will be an important element to be considered in the forthcoming review of the aid programme which will,inter alia, examine priorities for future spending in our greatly expanded aid programme.