BRITAIN: The British Chancellor of the Exchequer has unveiled proposals for a four-pronged $10 billion a year attack on AIDS, as he filled in the detail on his much trumpeted Marshall Plan for Africa. Mr Gordon Brown's plans would use a new financial mechanism to "frontload" investment in AIDS vaccine research and health care.
The International Finance Facility (IFF) would effectively use future aid budgets of donor countries to raise money on international capital markets, doubling investment in poor countries for a decade, according to Mr Brown.
During the first day yesterday of a week-long visit to Africa, he told an audience in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that current spending would only produce a partially effective vaccine for the developing world by 2015.
"But if by doubling research and development spending over the next five to 10 years," he said, "we could bring forward the discovery of an AIDS vaccine by three years and we could save six million lives that would otherwise be lost, future HIV/AIDS treatment costs could be reduced by $2 billion a year - money that could then be spent on education, water supplies and other critical needs."
It was a welcome return to number-crunching for the British chancellor, as he sought to put the constant rumbling over his relationship with the prime minister behind him. Mr Brown's aides dismissed any questions about tensions between the Downing Street neighbours.
Mr Brown said he wanted to tap into the world's compassion which had become evident since the Asian tsunami disaster.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 25 million people are infected with HIV and each year 2.2 million people die from AIDS. Life expectancy has fallen from 62 to 47 years and 11 million children have been orphaned, while only 440,000 people are getting treatment.
Earlier this year, Mr Brown unveiled his "Marshall Plan for Africa" which seeks to cancel debt and end those trade barriers that hurt the poorest nations.
His AIDS programme hinges on persuading donor countries to sign up to the IFF. Once running, said Mr Brown, it would channel $10 billion a year into four AIDS strategies: funding research into vaccines; providing cash to bulk buy courses of inoculation in advance; financing healthcare; and tackling poverty.
However, the IFF - first proposed by the UK government last year - faces a series of hurdles, most notable the less than lukewarm reaction of the US.
But the Global Fund, which raises and allocate funding for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria research, backed the idea.
Professor Richard Feachem, executive director, said the IFF offered the right strategy to get funding in place rapidly.
"AIDS is not unbeatable. It is not a natural catastrophe we have to endure," he said, "but to get on top of this pandemic, we need to think big and act boldly."
Mr Brown will also visit Mozambique and South Africa on the trip. It is designed to push debt relief and development to the top of the international agenda while Britain holds the presidencies of the G8 and EU.