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Every day, 14,000 people become HIV positive, most of them in developing countries. In the past five years the number of new cases among women has increased by 40 per cent. - oxfam

It claims approximately 8,000 lives every day in some of the poorest countries. - oxfam

Commentary
The Truth About George Bush's Anti-AIDS Push

Kenneth Davidson, The Age (centrist), Melbourne, Australia, Feb. 10, 2003

The president is returning a favor from the big U.S. pharmaceutical companies. Those who pay the piper call the tune. In campaigning for the 2002 U.S. congressional elections, the Republicans spent US$650 million (compared with $458 million for the Democrats) and $145 million of the total was raised personally by President George Bush.

According to Public Campaign, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group campaigning for electoral reform in the United States, many of Bush’s State of the Union proposals to Congress last month were designed to satisfy the desires of his largest campaign contributors. Thus, more than half the benefits of the $1.35 trillion in income-tax cuts over 10 years will go to Americans earning more than $104,000 a year. And they make the bulk of personal contributions of $1,000 or more, which have totaled $1.8 billion since 1999.

HIV/AIDS is an enormous development crisis. It has reduced life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa from 62 years to 47 years.- oxfam

HIV/AIDS currently claims more than one million lives each year in heavily indebted countries. Apart from the immediate suffering of the people themselves, HIV/AIDS is devastating education systems, placing new demands on already over-stretched health sectors, increasing time demands on women, jeopardising the future of orphaned children, and reducing economic growth by almost two per cent a year in some cases. - oxfam

Notwithstanding a $1bn ‘top-up’ at the Kananaskis G8 summit, rich countries have consistently failed to respond to the inadequacies of the Enhanced HIPC Initiative. No attempt has been made to revise debt sustainability indicators in light of the financing requirements for addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Meanwhile, many countries are being forced back into acute debt unsustainability by a protracted decline in commodity prices, weak aid flows, and wildly over-optimistic export-growth projections by IMF-World Bank staff. -oxfam