WASHINGTON -- U.S. President George W. Bush's new, 500-billion-dollar anti-HIV/AIDS initiative, announced here Wednesday, gained a bitter reception from AIDS activists who complained the plan was too little and far too narrowly focused.

''The plan is all for show,'' ACT UP, the Global AIDS Alliance, and other groups said in a statement. They targeted for protest late Wednesday a fund-raising dinner for Bush's Republican Party. The event's sponsors included major Western pharmaceutical companies.

GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) was the chief corporate fund-raiser at the dinner, which was expected to raise a record-breaking 30 million dollars for Bush and his party.

Bush's plan, called the International Mother and Child HIV Prevention Initiative, earmarks 500 million dollars in bilateral aid over the next two years to cut mother-to-child transmission of HIV by some 40 percent in 12 African countries, plus selected Caribbean programs.

Because the aid will be provided through bilateral channels, rather than via the new Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB (tuberculosis) and Malaria, medications used in the program are certain to be purchased from the patent-holding pharmaceutical companies rather than from firms, many of them in developing countries, that produce generic versions of the same drugs at lower cost.

''The administration is worried that the Global Fund will buy generics and thus damage the interests of the major pharmaceutical companies,'' noted Salih Booker, director of Africa Action, a grassroots coalition which played a key role in the anti-apartheid campaign of the 1970s and 1980s.

Activists said they hoped the administration would substantially boost its contributions to the Global Fund which, according to the United Nations and independent analysts, will need as much as ten billion dollars a year to effectively contain the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The virus, which has claimed the lives of some 23 million people over the last 20 years, currently infects roughly 40 million more worldwide, of whom 30 million are Africans.

Washington so far has committed only 300 million dollars to the Fund and has promised an additional 200 million dollars for next year. That is a tiny percentage of the 2.5 billion dollars -- or one-fourth share of the total funds needed -- that Washington would normally provide to major U.N. initiatives.

As a result, other major donors, while pledging about twice what Washington has committed in per capita terms, are still not filling the gap of what is needed, according to health activists. As a result, they say, the Global Fund has received only about two billion dollars in pledges for its first two years of operations. Existing funds might be exhausted after the next round of grants are awarded later this year.

''Once the U.S. makes low commitments, others don't feel any pressure to increase their own,'' said Booker.

What has angered activists even more is that Bush's new plan effectively derailed Congressional efforts this year to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars more to the Global Fund.

Just two weeks ago, the administration opposed a bipartisan Senate bill sponsored by Republican Arlen Specter and Democrat Richard Durbin that would have provided 700 million dollars in additional U.S. funding for the fight against AIDS this year, about half of which would have gone to the Global Fund.

Bush also personally intervened with Republican Senators Bill Frist and Jesse Helms to persuade them to slash 300 million dollars from a pending 500-million-dollar package in new anti-AIDS funding so that Bush's announcement Wednesday would be seen as a bold new step.

Frist, who is widely rumored to be Bush's choice to replace Vice President Dick Cheney on the Republican ticket for the 2004 elections, went along, paving the way for Wednesday's announcement.

''The sad reality is, the Bush announcement has only 300 million dollars in it, which does not start to trickle out until 2003 and 2004,'' said Paul Davis, director of government relations at Health GAP. ''Had Senators Frist and Helms and President Bush simply sat on their hands, the Global Fund would have received 700 million dollars in urgently needed new funding from the Specter/Durbin amendment.''

''Many more people with AIDS worldwide will die because the Global Fund will have to turn away many solid proposals before the end of the year,'' Davis added.

Booker charged that the announcement and its timing, coming just before next week's Group of Eight (G-8) Summit in Canada, were ''particularly cynical.'' The G-8, which includes the world's biggest bilateral donors, is expected to devote one day of discussion to Africa, including the AIDS crisis.

''Obviously, the timing of the announcement was designed to pre-empt criticism at the Summit by announcing something in advance that makes it look like Bush is serious about poverty and AIDS,'' Booker said. ''But people must not be fooled.''

Booker and other critics pointed to a recent report by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that predicted a sharp increase in HIV infection rates for Africa's two most populous countries -- Nigeria and Ethiopia -- as more evidence of the urgent need for action.

Prevalence rates in both countries -- with a combined population of almost 200 million -- could rise to around 20 percent or even higher by 2010, according to the CIA's National Intelligence Council.

Ethiopia is included with seven other African countries -- Botswana (where infection rates have reached a global high of around 40 percent), Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda -- where Bush's new initiative will be applied this year. Nigeria, along with Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia, Guyana and Haiti, will be added next year, according to a White House fact sheet.

The initiative, Bush said, will be used to treat one million women annually and reduce mother-to-child transmission of the virus by 40 percent within five years or less in target countries. Worldwide, close to 2,000 babies are infected with HIV every day during pregnancy, birth or through breast-feeding.

Copyright 2002 IPS

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