[procaare] Five Nations to Tax Airfare to Raise Funds for AIDS Drugs

["New York Times" <procaare@healthnet.org>]

Five Nations to Tax Airfare to Raise Funds for AIDS Drugs
New York Times: September 19, 2006
By  Celia W Dugger
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/world/19health.html
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A group of countries led by France plan to raise at least $300 million next 
year, mostly through taxes on airline tickets, to help pay for the treatment 
of children with AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, a senior French official 
said yesterday.

The countries, acting through a new Geneva-based organization called 
UNITAID, plan to pool their buying power and have asked former President 
Bill Clintons foundation to negotiate with drug companies for volume 
discounts.

The countries France, Brazil, Britain, Norway and Chile will announce the 
new undertaking today at the United Nations.

In all, they say, the plan can help pay for the treatment of 100,000 
children with AIDS, and another 100,000 people who have become resistant to 
antiretroviral AIDS drugs, as well as the treatment of 150,000 children with 
tuberculosis and 28 million with malaria.

Some worry that the airline tax revenue will eventually supplant traditional 
sources of assistance from annual government budgets.

Experts warned that the focus on the purchase of medicine and diagnostic 
tests did not deal with the most difficult obstacles to treatment in Africa: 
the extreme shortage of health workers and broken-down public health 
systems.

The United States, which has its own ambitious global AIDS program, has 
rejected the idea of financing a health program with an airline tax.