The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed a $15-billion bill that would more than double US contributions to the worldwide fight against Aids.
Supporters, led by President George W. Bush, said the money could bring relief to millions of people with Aids and prevent the deadly disease from infecting millions more.
”It sends a message to the world that the United States will not sit idly by and allow Aids to wreak havoc,” said Republican Barbara Lee.
The House passed the legislation by a 375-41 vote after lawmakers approved an amendment assuring that one-third of the money for Aids prevention would go to sexual abstinence programmes.
The president’s conservative allies had insisted that abstinence get a prominent role in the Aids effort.
The five-year spending plan is aimed specifically at sub-Saharan Africa, home to 30 million of the world’s 42 million Aids sufferers, and the Caribbean.
The United States this year is spending about $1,2 billion on international Aids efforts.
”Not since the bubonic plague swept across the world in the last millennium, killing more than 250 million people, has our world confronted such a horrible, unspeakable curse as we are now witnessing with the growing HIV/Aids pandemic,” said Republican Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee.
”So much of what we do is really unimportant and trivial, but not today,” said Hyde, chief sponsor of the measure with Republican Tom Lantos.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has pledged to act quickly on a Senate bill with the goal of getting legislation to the president by the end of the month.
Bush, in his State of the Union address in January, challenged Congress to come up with the significant increase in America’s financial contribution to the fight against Aids.
DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa), an advocacy group founded by the rock star Bono, said the bill would prevent seven million new infections, provide care for 10 million HIV-infected individuals and Aids orphans, and give antiretroviral therapy for two million.
But the bill also had its critics. Conservatives demanded stronger language to promote abstinence and monogamy as the best ways to prevent Aids. They also sought language protecting religious groups that object to the distribution of condoms in their anti-Aids programmes.
The House approved, 220-197, an amendment requiring that one-third of funds spent on prevention go to abstinence programmes.
The legislation recommends that 20% of the aid for other countries go to prevention, with 55% for treatment programmes, 15% for palliative care and 10% for orphans.
Prevention programmes are modelled after the ”ABC” approach that has achieved some success in Uganda. The model stresses ”A” for abstinence, ”B” for being faithful and ”C” for condom use when appropriate.
The White House said in a statement that it supported language that would ”prioritise the abstinence component of the ABC approach”.
Critics contended that the Uganda model was successful because all three approaches were given equal importance. Uganda, while stressing abstinence and monogamy, has also been distributing 80 million condoms a year, Lantos said.
”Countless lives will be lost if we fail to learn this lesson,” he said. – Sapa-AP