[afro-nets] Five Nations to Tax Airfare to Raise Funds for AIDS Drugs

["Claudio Schuftan" <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

Five Nations to Tax Airfare to Raise Funds for AIDS Drugs
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/world/19health.html

A group of countries led by France plan to raise at least $300 million next year, mostly through taxes on airline tickets, to help pay for the treatment of children with AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, a senior French official said yesterday.

The countries, acting through a new Geneva-based organization called UNITAID, plan to pool their buying power and have asked former President Bill Clinton’s foundation to negotiate with drug companies for volume discounts.

The countries France, Brazil, Britain, Norway and Chile will announce the new undertaking today at the United Nations.

In all, they say, the plan can help pay for the treatment of 100,000 children with AIDS, and another 100,000 people who have become resistant to antiretroviral AIDS drugs, as well as the treatment of 150,000 children with tuberculosis and 28 million with malaria.

Some worry that the airline tax revenue will eventually supplant traditional sources of assistance from annual government budgets.

Experts warned that the focus on the purchase of medicine and diagnostic tests did not deal with the most difficult obstacles to treatment in Africa: the extreme shortage of health workers and broken-down public health systems.

The United States, which has its own ambitious global AIDS program, has rejected the idea of financing a health program with an airline tax.

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Claudio Schuftan
mailto:claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn