PH gets $20M in grants for anti-AIDS drive

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines has obtained about $20.4 million (about P890 million) in grants from the Global Fund to boost its not-so successful campaign to halt the spread of the dreaded HIV-AIDS disease.

According to the Global Fund website, other member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) which got aid from the body included Thailand ($174.06 million), Cambodia ($111.05 million), Indonesia ($84.8 million), Vietnam ($27.4 million), Laos ($20.6 million) and Myanmar ($5.83 million).

At the top of the list were: Ethiopia ($560.4 million), India ($384.9 million) and Tanzania ($364.3 million).

Teresita Marie Bagasao, country coordinator of the United Nations Program on HIV-AIDS (UNAIDS) said the Philippine campaign against the killer disease has long been “underfunded.”

She said that aside from funds, there were other “factors that must be resolved first, like government support and a real commitment to address the HIV-AIDS problem.”

“Enabling policies and a clear stand of the government on some concerns, like the condom issue, that will have impact on the epidemic must be in place. Commodities must be available and universal access to them must be achieved,” she also said.

The Catholic Church in the Philippines is lobbying hard against legislation that will allot more government funds for condom distribution and mandate safe sex education in all schools.

HIV is a sexually transmitted disease. It can also be contracted through contaminated blood.

Avelino warned: “If the country will continue to put the HIV-AIDS issue at the backseat of its priorities, cases will continue to rise.”

“In some areas of the country, HIV is more than one percent (compared to the average national prevalence of under 0.1 percent), giving us a concentrated epidemic,” she added.

Last month, UNAIDS revealed that on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most alarming, the HIV-AIDS problem in the country was “five nationally.” But it was “already eight to nine in specific sites.”

The Philippines was one of only seven nations in the world which reported increases over 25 percent in new HIV infections between 2001 and 2009, whereas other countries have either stabilized or shown significant declines.

In Asia, only the Philippines and Bangladesh were now reporting increases in HIV cases, she added.

The Department of Health reported there were 1,305 confirmed new HIV infections during the first 10 months of 2010, compared with 835 for the whole of 2009. –Jerry E. Esplanada, Philippine Daily Inquirer