AIDS crisis grows in the US, while the House funds Africa AIDS projects

The warning, issued this week by the Southern AIDS Coalition, a nonprofit partnership of government and private-sector programs based in Birmingham, Ala., concluded that AIDS was creating a health disaster in the South.

AIDS deaths fell or held steady in other parts of the country from 2001 to 2006, the last year for which complete figures were available, but they rose by more than 10 percent in the South, according to the report, titled “Southern States Manifesto 2008.”

Although the covered area is home to only 36 percent of the nation’s population, half of all U.S. AIDS deaths in 2005 were in the South, and more than half of all Americans with HIV lived in the region in 2006.

Nine of the 15 states with the highest HIV diagnosis rates are in the South.

More than 40 percent of all new infections are in the South.

Of the 20 metropolitan areas with the highest rates of AIDS cases in 2006, 16 were in the South.

The 303-to-115 vote sends the bill to President Bush for his signature. Mr. Bush, who first floated the idea of a campaign against AIDS in his 2003 State of the Union address, supports the five-year, $48 billion plan.

Researchers said it meant HIV was now effectively a chronic condition like diabetes, rather than a fatal disease, the Lancet reported.

Researcher Professor Jonathan Sterne said: "These advances have transformed HIV from being a fatal disease, which was the reality for patients before the advent of combination treatment, into a long-term chronic condition."

According to a study by Unaids and the Kaiser Family Foundation, the United States provided one-fifth of AIDS financing from all sources — governments, international aid groups and the private sector — in 2007. Of the $4.9 billion disbursed in 2007 from the Group of 8 countries, Europe and other donor governments, about 40 percent came from the United States.

The legislation approves spending of $5 billion for malaria and $4 billion for tuberculosis, the leading cause of death for people with AIDS.

The program has focused on nations in sub-Saharan Africa that have been devastated by AIDS, but it has also provided help in the Caribbean and other areas hit by the pandemic now affecting about 33 million people worldwide. Even with advances in treatment, there are still about 7,000 new H.I.V. infections every day around the world.