Caribbean countries to get US $44M to fight HIV/AIDS

GEORGETOWN, Guyana: More than a dozen Caribbean countries will get US $44 million in funding to help fight HIV/AIDS, officials from a US-backed global AIDS fund said yesterday. Guyana, Haiti, Belize, Jamaica and the nine nations which comprise the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States will receive funds, said Edward Greene, secretary general of the 15-member Caribbean Community. Officials from the Switzerland-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said they won’t decide how much money each country gets until November.  Before this year, Haiti was the only country in the region to receive help from the fund, Greene said.

Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, has the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates in the region, with an estimated five percent of its eight million residents infected, according to the World Health Organisation. The US $44 million would be used through 2005, and the 13 countries could receive an additional US $66 million between 2005 and 2010, Greene said. The Caribbean has the highest infection rates behind Sub-Saharan Africa. An estimated 2.4 percent of people, or 500,000 — excluding Cuba where infections rates are low — have  HIV. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest infection rate at 8.8 percent.