AIDS money: pittance in begging bowl

"It's always good to be bisexual," he remarked jokingly, "because it doubles your chances of finding a date on a Saturday night."

British songwriter and singer Elton John told a newspaper reporter that ever since he publicly confessed his bisexuality, twice as many people wave at him when they encounter him on the streets.

First, it was only women, he joked, then it was both men and women. As Woody Allen would have it, Elton John perhaps got the best of both worlds _ and became twice as popular.

But such brash sexual sentiments are no longer the vogue _ particularly at a time when the world is being engulfed by a deadly disease called Acquired Immune-Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

The American ritual of dating was so permissive during the 1970s that sex was virtually free of all inhibitions _ and protection scarce.

The spread of AIDS has dramatically changed the sexual mores in the United States and perhaps even in the rest of the world _ judging by the strong global responses to the devastating disease, as articulated during a major UN conference on AIDS last week.

Virtually everything that is not usually discussed at UN 'talkfests' was on the agenda _ gays, safe sex, lesbianism, drug use, sex workers, sexual violence and the use of contraceptives.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan momentarily digressed from the General Assembly Hall to preside over a separate meeting of HIV-positive men and women attending the conference from the far corners of the world.

The statistics of the AIDS epidemic are frightening. Since the disease was tracked down about 20 years ago, over 22 million people have been killed. 

Today there are an estimated 36 million people living with HIV, the virus that transmits the disease. Of the 36 million, more than 25 million are Africans.

In sub-Saharan Africa alone, the death toll claimed by the epidemic last year was 10 times that of the wars and conflicts in that battle-scarred region.

Perhaps one of the more urgent demands of the AIDS crisis is for financial resources to fight the disease at a national, regional and global level.

After a slow and hesitant start, Annan's much-ballyhooed Global AIDS Fund topped close to a billion dollars in contributions _ but still lagged far behind the targeted $10 billion.

The fund is primarily aimed at controlling AIDS but it will also be deployed to fight tuberculosis and malaria.

According to Julia Celeves, senior policy officer at UNAIDS, only about $1.8 billion is currently being spent on AIDS annually compared with the projected $10 billion.

The US, which has contributed $200 million to the fund, has come in for strong criticism. 

Even as US Secretary of State Colin Powell told delegates last week that the $200 million US pledge was only "seed money," several anti-AIDS activists and NGOs dismissed the US contribution as too little, too late.

Powell said the US contribution was meant to jump start the global fund and help generate "billions more from donors all over the world". "And more will come from the United States as we learn where our support can be most effective," he pledged.

For a country, which has proposed a $329 billion defence budget in 2002 _ and accounts for over 26 percent of the world's gross national product _ the $200 million was peanuts.

Paul Davis of the Health GAP Coalition, an NGO active in the fight against AIDS, said the US pledge is roughly about three dollars for the treatment of each person with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa: "enough to buy dinner, may be not enough to save a life."

Following the US's "dubious lead", Davis said, several other countries have contributed much smaller amounts, jeopardising the ability of the fund to make a meaningful impact against the epidemic.

Tim Atwater of Jubilee USA, an NGO campaigning for the cancellation of Third World debts, said: "The $200 million which President George W. Bush has pledged is the same amount as sub-Saharan Africa spends on debt payments in less than a week." He said the US Congress will write the cheque by Monday _ and by Friday, Africa would have paid it back in interest payments on its debts.

The conference ended with a slew of pious declarations and a rash of new commitments to fight the disease. Asked by a reporter whether the declarations were just rhetoric, Annan said such criticisms occur after nearly each large UN conference.

"It is sometimes difficult to quantify achievements," he added, "But we have focused awareness on this issue in a manner that the world has not seen before."