Researchers from the Harvard University Center for International Development estimate that the true amount needed by developing countries to fight AIDS effectively could exceed $10 billion a year for the next few years, and this money needs to be supplied in the form of grants rather than loans, they say.
Writing in the January 6th edition of The Lancet, Dr Amir Attaran and Professor Jeffery Sachs, point out that in 1998, donations and loans for AIDS control activities amounted to just over $210 million, although donations increased somewhat during 1999 and 2000 as pharmaceutical companies and organisations such as the Gates Foundation stepped in.
"An effort of this scale …together with comparable efforts to control other infectious diseases, is easily afforded by the OECD donor economies, whose aggregate national income recently surpassed $21 trillion annually".
In the view of the authors, such a programme needs to conform to the following principles:
- Must be based on grants not loans
- Must be directed towards funding projects which are proposed and desired by the affected countries
- Must be judged to have epidemiological merit by an international scientific panel
- Must be scaled up urgently
The full text of this important article is available free at The Lancet's website.