AIDS (Hansard, 9 December 2002)

§ Mr. Lyons
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what the Government are doing to help those suffering from AIDS and HIV in the developing world. [85389]

§ Clare Short
My Department continues to make a significant contribution to combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In our bilateral programmes alone, expenditure on HIV/AIDS related work has increased from £38 million in 1997–98 to over £200 million in 2001–02. Major new investments include support for programmes in Nigeria, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mozambique, Russia, and Ghana, China and India totalling over £350 million. We have also pledged US$200 million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, and £30 million to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and the Medical Research Council's Microbicides Development Programme. Considerable additional resources have also been committed to United Nations agencies and civil society organisations to help combat HIV/AIDS and to help people living with the disease across the developing world. We will continue to support health system strengthening and comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention, care, control and mitigation programmes. We are also supporting access to medicines, including 57W for HIV/AIDS. The approach of the recently launched High Level Working Group on Access to Medicines Report is to facilitate widespread voluntary differential pricing of essential medicines for the poorer developing countries as the operational norm.

§ Dr. Tonge
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how much her Department has contributed to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative in each year since its inception. [85632]

§ Clare Short
The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) is harnessing public and private resources to accelerate the development of safe, effective and accessible preventive AIDS vaccines that will be affordable to poor countries. The UK was the first Government to support IAVI, initially with £200,000, followed by a grant of £14 million over five years, which the Prime Minister announced at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in November 1999.
The annual breakdown of expenditure is as follows:

£

1999–2000 625,000

2000–01 875,000

2001–02 1,500,000

2002–03 2,250,000

	£
1999–2000	625,000
2000–01	875,000
2001–02	1,500,000
2002–03	2,250,000