Controversy Over Bill Gates' AIDS Grant To India

by Ranjit Devraj

Speaking at one of many functions during his four-day visit to Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore -- Gates said the money was the "largest single initiative focused on a single country" by the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation.

But many are skeptical, among them India's Health Minister Shatrughan Sinha who denounced U.S. Ambassador Robert Blackwill's attempts to promote U.S.-led anti- HIV/AIDS initiatives based on projections that India would have 25 million AIDS sufferers by 2010.

Asked about the government's questioning of the AIDS statistics cited by his foundation, Gates, during a visit to a voluntary agency where he met people with HIV, said what was important was the disease and not the figures.

Controversy has been building since Blackwill quoted the figures from a report released by the CIA. He also referred to $63 million spent by the United States for containment of HIV/AIDS in India over the last five years.

According to the CIA report, the spread of HIV/AIDS in India, Russia and China posed serious threats to international health and economy unless urgent measures, including vaccination, were taken to contain the disease.

In the report, the three countries -- together with Nigeria and Ethiopia -- are projected to outstrip sub-Saharan Africa in the number of people living with HIV/AIDS by 2010. The report says that an estimated 50 million to 75 million people could be living with the disease.

Volunteer agencies, led by the Joint Action Council (JAC), that work on human rights issues linked to HIV/AIDS wrote to Sinha demanding that the government take a stand on the issue.

In a pointed reference to projections made separately by Gates and Blackwill, Sinha said: "I fail to understand how people holding such important positions can stand on our soil and say that India will have 25 million sufferers of AIDS by 2010."

Sinha accused Gates and Blackwill of spreading fear in India about HIV/AIDS and said he suspected that "false propaganda" was being used to help the interests of transnational corporations and people who were against India's "safety and security."

Possibly as a reaction to the controversy generated by the issue, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee did not show up at a high-powered lunch with Gates, who instead went to meet him briefly at his residence.

Sinha too declined to meet Gates and flew off Monday to the bustling port city of Mumbai, a stronghold of the former film star.

Earlier this year, the health ministry said there were 3.97 million people infected with the virus that could lead to AIDS. The figures, derived from a report by the ministry's Sentinel Surveillance Survey, said the spread of the virus had been contained.

Meenakshi Dutt Ghosh, project director for the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO), said in a televised interview, "We have no idea how these [CIA] figures were arrived at... going by the Sentinel Surveillance Survey 10.9 million people could be suffering from AIDS by 2010."

In the past, the ministry has expressed extreme annoyance at figures released by UN agencies that differed from its own.

For example, the ministry objected to figures released by UN agencies in 2000 which said that 310,000 Indians had died of AIDS in India the previous year but did not explain how that figure was arrived at. The figures were later retracted.

Said Dr. C.P. Thakur, Sinha's immediate predecessor as health minister. "No agency has the means to calculate epidemiological statistics in this country or the authority to release them to the public."

But different international agencies have continued to cite other statistics on how many Indians were dead or dying from HIV/AIDS. "Every year we update our information and we are surprised to see other figures cited freely," Sinha said.

Gates said the $100 million grant would be used for programs that focus on mobile populations such as truck drivers and migrant laborers who are considered to be at higher risk of acquiring and spreading HIV/AIDS.

Last year Gates' foundation issued a $100 million challenge grant to the U.K.-based International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) which has since signed an agreement with the Indian government to develop a vaccine to specifically target prevalent strains in this country.

In interviews given to Indian publications ahead of his tour, Gates declared that as with his giant software company, Microsoft Corp., the key to his charity was the large number of intelligent people, that were attracted to it and that have formed "partnerships."

Ethnic Indians form 20 percent of Microsoft Corp's engineering force, and Gates said this led him to have a special interest in India, a country he is visiting for the fifth time and where the company maintains software development centers.

"India is uniquely positioned to not only address its own HIV-AIDS challenges and save millions of lives, but also to help other developing countries with emerging epidemics," Gates said, praising research capabilities.

"The initiative will also work to reduce and combat societal stigma surrounding the disease," said Gates, referring to another controversial topic that has surrounded anti-HIV/AIDS programs in India's highly traditional and conservative society in which open discussion of sexual topics is taboo.

Over the past two years volunteers working with HIV/AIDS programs have found themselves attacked by the public and even jailed under anti-terrorist laws by police.