How to Waste a $15Bn Opportunity: George Bush and Tony Blair Have a Lot of Money to Spend on Aids in the Developing World-But Don't Expect Them to Take Advice from the Experts

Gill, Peter, New Statesman (1996)

Pity the ministers and officials who have to sustain Tony Blair's rosy vision of the special relationship. First there was climate change. Then came the war and British detainees in Guantanamo. Now there is an issue where hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake--Aids in the developing world.

The United States and Britain are the world's biggest Aids donors. George W Bush has committed $15bn over five years, and Gordon Brown has just come up with [pounds sterling]1.5bn over the next three. These are huge sums, and there is big influence to match. When Bush and Blair sat down in Downing Street last November and gave some time to the Aids issue, they also agreed on a joint task force to co-ordinate their approach. Since then, both the US and the UK have come out with strategies for how to spend the money. They certainly appear to be discussing the same epidemic and they agree on the statistics. But there the meeting of minds ends. Their Aids policy-makers inhabit different planets.

The first thing to note about the two strategy documents is the pictures. In the president's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief there are 13. Nine are of George and Laura Bush and two are of Randall Tobias, the former pharmaceutical industry boss who is running …

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Publication information: Article title: How to Waste a $15Bn Opportunity: George Bush and Tony Blair Have a Lot of Money to Spend on Aids in the Developing World-But Don't Expect Them to Take Advice from the Experts. Contributors: Gill, Peter - Author. Magazine title: New Statesman (1996). Volume: 133. Issue: 4704 Publication date: September 6, 2004. Page number: 25+. © Not available. COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group.

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