US fights charges that it hinders Aids battle

BANGKOK - The United States insists it is leading the global fight against Aids, despite stinging criticism of its drug and funding policies at a global conference.

Washington's moral agenda, trade policies and funding guidelines have been attacked by activists and world leaders, including French President Jacques Chirac and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Administration took the crisis very seriously.

"We do consider it the greatest threat of mass destruction on the face of the planet in the present age," he said in Washington.

"And we are continuing our efforts to lead the efforts internationally with funding, with science, with diplomacy, and with the energy of the United States government behind it to try to address this crisis."

US Aids czar Randall Tobias will set out Washington's commitment to fighting the pandemic, which has claimed 20 million lives and continues to infect 14,000 people a day, when he addresses the 15th International Aids Conference.

He is likely to argue there is room for different approaches in fighting Aids, rejecting accusations that Washington's Aids programme and its support for sexual abstinence as a pillar of policy is undermining a unified strategy.

President George W. Bush's plan pledges US$15 billion ($23 billion) - US$10 billion of it new money - over five years for care, prevention and treatment in 15 countries, mostly in Africa and the Caribbean.

Critics say Washington's bilateral effort undermines the UN-backed Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which is facing a funding shortfall.

The US is already the biggest donor to the fund.

Annan told the conference the US should show the same commitment to Aids it shows in the battle against terrorism.

Chirac, in a speech read out on his behalf, said a US drive for bilateral trade deals was undermining an international pact to provide cheap copycat Aids drugs to the developing world.

The conference - the biggest gathering of scientists, activists, drug company bosses and Aids sufferers - has seen daily protests against Bush, other G8 leaders and the drug industry for failing to do more to fight the pandemic.

The Bush plan has also drawn fire for linking funds to a policy of sexual abstinence over condoms, and requiring that drugs, purchased with US funds for use in developing countries, be approved by the Federal Drug Administration.

Tobias, the former chairman and chief executive of US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly , told reporters earlier in the week the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief would buy safe and effective drugs from the cheapest source of supply.

Critics, such as British-based charity Oxfam, fear the requirement for FDA approval is a tactic to protect patented drug brands from generic competitors. But Tobias said it was vital that any cheap generics used met the highest possible standards.

The conference heard yesterday that a generation ago, one in 10 of new Aids patients in the US was a woman. It's now one in four.

Worldwide, women made up nearly half of the adults living with HIV/Aids in 2003, up from 41 per cent in 1997. In sub-Saharan Africa - which has the world's highest rates of HIV/Aids with an estimated 25 million cases - there are, on average, 13 HIV-positive women for every 10 HIV-positive men.

In session after session, delegates are coming to this conclusion: the biggest single cause of the gender epidemic is faithful women being infected by men who are injecting drugs and/or having sex with multiple other women or other men.

"In many African and Asian societies, women's legal and social status is subordinate to men's, and they may have little or no control over the sexual behaviour of male partners and often cannot negotiate the use of condoms," says US Aids researcher Dr Zeda Rosenberg.

Women victims

* One in four new Aids patients in the United States is a woman.

* The problem is more acute among minorities.

* Black women made up 12 per cent of the US female population, but 64 per cent of new female HIV infections in 2003.

* Hispanics made up 14 per cent of the US female population and 18 per cent of new female HIV cases.

- REUTERS