Ahern to announce extra funds to tackle AIDS

The Taoiseach Mr Ahern is traveling to New York today for a special three-day UN General Assembly meeting on the global AIDS crisis.

Mr Ahern, who is due to address the Assembly tomorrow, is expected to announce a substantial increase in funding from Ireland to tackle AIDS in the world's poorest countries.The increase is said to be in the region of £30m.

We cannot deal with AIDS by making moral judgments, or refusing to face unpleasant facts, and still less by stigmatising those who are infected and making out that it is all their fault UN secretary-general, Mr Kofi Annan

He is also expected to call for the tiered pricing of medicines in co-operation with the major pharmaceutical companies to facilitate access by the poorest countries to life saving medicines.

The Taoiseach will meet UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan as well as the Prime Ministers of Lesotho and Mozambique, two of Ireland's aid priority countries.

Mr Annan called on world leaders today to show compassion and frankness in confronting the AIDS epidemic that is killing five million people a year.

"We cannot deal with AIDS by making moral judgments, or refusing to face unpleasant facts, and still less by stigmatising those who are infected and making out that it is all their fault," he said.

Mr Annan was speaking from the podium of the General Assembly in New York at the start of a three-day special session on HIV/AIDS - the first in the 56-year history of the United Nations that has been devoted to a public health issue.

His impassioned appeal for candour was an indirect rebuke to conservatives who objected to explicit references to homosexuals, people in the "sex industry", drug-users and prison inmates in the declaration the session is due to adopt.

"Let us remember that every person who is infected, whatever the reason, is a fellow human being, with human rights and human needs," Mr Annan said.

Mr Annan appealed to developing country leaders to increase domestic spending on HIV/AIDS to five times its current level, and to governments and private donors in the developed world to contribute to the global fund he has proposed.

Meanwhile the 10th International Conference on Human Retrovirology was opened by the President, Mrs McAleesein Trinity College, Dublin today.

Professor Robert Gallo, who is attributed with the discovery of HIV and who demonstrated that it is the cause of AIDS, will address the Conference this evening.

Many of the participants are international leaders in research into human retroviruses, and the conference is the only global platform for the discussion of this research. This is the second time the conference has been held in Europe, the first being at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1995.

Additional reporting by AFP