The UK government will fund two four-year projects to tackle the AIDS pandemic, and improve sexual and reproductive health for women and young people in developing countries. The funding is worth
The UK government will fund two four-year projects to tackle the AIDS pandemic, and improve sexual and reproductive health for women and young people in developing countries. The funding is worth £116m.
Hilary Benn, the UK's International development Secretary, said that £80m funding from the UK would go to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), while £36m will go to UNAIDS to fund its key role in leading the global effort to tackle AIDS and provide coordination and harmonisation of donor efforts at country level.
Benn said: 'Sexual and reproductive health and AIDS are inextricably linked. By taking action on one, we know we are also helping to tackle the other.
'Far too many poor women in developing countries live with painful, disabling and hidden injuries and illness because they are denied their rights to sexual and reproductive health.'
520,000 women die each year from pregnancy and child-birth related illnesses and in 2003 over 1m women died of AIDS, figures that Benn called: 'shocking statistics'.
The department for international development has released a paper: 'Sexual and reproductive Health and Rights', which sets out how the DFID will push for faster progress in making high quality family planning accessible to all.