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01/27/2005:

"Six Million Dying of Aids Amid Tsunami Largesse"

Within three weeks after the tsunami disaster ravaged south and south-east Asia, the international donor community responded magnanimously by pledging an unprecedented 5.5 billion to 6 billion dollars for emergency relief and reconstruction.

By a coincidence, says U.N. Special Envoy Stephen Lewis, the Global Fund on AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria received an identical amount of about 5.9 billion dollars in pledges from the donor community.

The difference between the two responses is that it took three years -- not three weeks -- to raise the same amount of money to combat a disease devastating millions of lives, says Lewis, who is U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Full Article : allafrica.com