Airfares tax will raise $450m for sick kids

France, Britain and three other countries are setting up a $450 million plan next year to raise money through a tax on airline tickets to treat children with Aids, malaria and tuberculosis.

The plan, announced by the United Nations yesterday, aims to help about 200,000 children who have contracted Aids or become resistant to anti-retroviral drugs, as well as 150,000 victims of tuberculosis and 28 million with malaria.

The five-nation group, which also includes Norway, Brazil and Chile, intends to enlist the foundation set up by former US President Bill Clinton - heavily involved in the campaign against Aids - to negotiate lower prices with international drug companies.

The scheme is being operated through a new organisation, Unitaid, based in Geneva.

Unitaid has been structured to provide long-term financing for a treatment that will last the entire life of an Aids patient.

"We'll have a sustainable way to assure a supply of drugs and tests for the long term," said Ira Magaziner, the former Clinton White House aide who heads the foundation's Aids programme.

Bulk buying by Unitaid would also secure lower prices, he said.

But some public health experts are concerned that a new long-term tax could lead to cuts in other government anti-Aids programmes.

Others say it will not address the chronic lack of trained personnel in Africa's ramshackle public health care system.

The main contributor to the scheme is France, which will give Unitaid US$250 million, raised through a tax on international flights which went into operation this year.

Britain will chip in US$25 million next year, and a dozen other countries are studying the possible introduction of their own schemes.

The United States, which has its own $US15 billion plan to fight Aids, is not backing the plan.

The United Nations believes only 80,000 of the 660,000 children world-wide who need antiretroviral drugs are getting them.

"Every day of delay means 8000 more Aids deaths in Africa and 14,000 more infections," President George W. Bush said when he announced America's five-year plan in May, 2003.

- INDEPENDENT