The Gates Foundation has committed another $ 23 million for HIV/AIDS programmes in India over the next three years, to be channelled through the National AIDS Control Organisation

In addition to the $ 47 million (Rs 216 crore) grant that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given for HIV/AIDS, through its Avahan programme for a period of five years, software pioneer Bill Gates has pledged another $ 23 million to India to control HIV/AIDS in the country.

The announcement was made on June 25, 2008, when India’s Minister of Health Anbumani Ramadoss called on Gates at his office in Seattle in the United States.

The grant will be spent through the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) in India over the next three years.

At the meeting, Gates enquired about the polio situation in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and was appreciative of the National Rural Health Mission that the government has launched to strengthen the public health system in rural areas.

At a separate meeting of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for which Gates will work full time after retiring from active participation in Microsoft, Ramadoss discussed the polio situation in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the tobacco control programme, India’s Drugs Regulatory Authority, the HIV/AIDS situation in India, and several other issues.

The Gates Foundation started its operations in India in 2003 and has committed over $ 200 million (Rs 920 crore) to HIV prevention in India -- the Foundation’s largest commitment to HIV/AIDS in any single country.

In 2002, the Gates Foundation gave $ 20 million to develop India’s Shiksha edtech training programme (which has an ambitious target of training over 80,000 teachers and 3.5 million students over several years); $ 1 million to the Media Lab Asia project; and a $ 25 million five-year grant for a children’s vaccine programme against hepatitis B in Andhra Pradesh.

Source: Press Trust of India, June 27, 2008