United Senate Boosts AIDS Funding, Over Bush Objections

[kayell]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/oneworld/20031031/wl_oneworld/4536717931067627737

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct 31 (OneWorld) -- Rejecting calls by President Bush (news - web sites), the Senate late Thursday voted 89-1 to approve an amendment to the $18.4 billion foreign-aid bill for 2004 that will add almost $300 million dollars to the global fight against HIV (news - web sites)/AIDS (news - web sites).


If approved by a House-Senate conference committee, which will hash out their different versions of the underlying bill over the coming days, the Senate action would make $2.4 billion available to anti-AIDS programs, particularly in Africa and the Caribbean, in the coming year.


The House version caps anti-AIDS spending at $2.1 billion, the amount that Bush asked for in his initial budget request last winter.


The Senate vote was hailed by AIDS activists as a major victory in their fight to Washington to contribute more money to containing and eventually rolling back the disease, which is currently killing about 8,000 people worldwide every day. Although about 75 percent of the victims are African, the disease is spreading quickly in India, China, Russia and other important countries on the Eurasian continent.


more