HIV-AIDS is having a devastating impact on the poorest countries and is contributing to an increase in poverty and a decline in development indicators. In December 2000, more than 36 million people were estimated to have been infected with HIV-AIDS. More than 22 million people have died of the disease to date. HIV infection is concentrated in countries that can least afford the sickness, death and loss of productivity it brings. In Southern Africa, the HIV-AIDS infection level in the adult population now exceeds 25% in many countries.
HIV-AIDS is a major public health and development challenge in all of Ireland Aid's priority countries, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda, Mozambique and Lesotho. Ireland Aid has integrated the fight against AIDS into all of its development activities. There are now HIV-AIDS programmes in all of our priority countries and in Zimbabwe and Ghana. Our funding to UNAIDS has increased from $75,000 in 1999 to $500,000 in 2001. We will contribute £1.5 million to the international AIDS vaccine initiative in 2001.
Our growing aid budget will allow us to augment international support with an increased volume of financial resources for HIV-AIDS activities at country level. These investments will be complemented by an intensified involvement in the development of health systems that are responsive to the many challenges presented by the AIDS epidemic.
Most of the 36 million people who are infected with HIV cannot access effective treatment. In Africa less than one out of every 1,000 people with HIV-AIDS is benefiting from combination anti retro-viral therapy. At a cost of up to US $10,000-$15,000 per person per year, medicines to slow the progression of AIDS and to control opportunistic infections are far beyond what most African governments can afford.
Last year the Taoiseach wrote to the President of the European Commission, Mr Prodi, urging an accelerated EU response to the AIDS crisis and raising the issues of access to drugs for poor countries. In September 2000 the Commission issued a communication on accelerated action against HIV-AIDS, malaria and TB. It has since followed up this communication with an action plan. Accelerated action aims to increase the effectiveness of existing interventions, deals with affordability through the proposed introduction of tiered pricing and strengthens research into vaccines. The action plan gives priority to spending on health, AIDS and population, HAP, activities in the EC development co-operation programme.
Following the EU-Africa Heads of State summit in Cairo in April 2000, Ireland and the European Commission drafted a plan of action, a key focus of which is to improve access by African countries to essential medications. This EU plan will now be discussed with African states in the follow-up process to the EU-Africa summit.
In a statement to the UN Security Council on 19 January, we called for an intensification of efforts by UN bodies, drugs industry and other relevant organisations to address the complex issues of access to medicines and overcoming obstacles in that regard.