The William J. Clinton Foundation in Little Rock, Arkansas, has pledged $10 million to expand its HIV/AIDS initiative, enabling it to deliver anti-retroviral treatments to 10,000 children in at least ten countries by year's end.

Although 500,000 children die of AIDS each year, only 15,000 to 25,000 children receive anti-retroviral treatments for the virus, with nearly one-half of those in Brazil and Thailand. Through its HIV/AIDS initiative, the Clinton Foundation will donate drugs and provide technical assistance to at least ten countries, with a goal of treating at least 10,000 children with AIDS by the end of 2005. Because pediatric HIV/AIDS medications are usually more than five times as expensive as adult treatments, the foundation has partnered with India-based drug manufacturer Cipla to reduce the price of the medicines by more than 50 percent. The first shipment of drugs will reach China, the Dominican Republic, Lesotho, Rwanda, and Tanzania later this spring.

"One in every six AIDS deaths each year is a child," said former President Bill Clinton. "Yet children represent less than one of every thirty persons getting treatment in developing countries today. These children need hope, and we know what must be done. The global community has the means to save many lives, and we must meet that responsibility as quickly as we can."

The foundation also announced that the initiative's rural program, which hopes to establish models of HIV/AIDS care and treatment in rural communities that can be exported to other developing nations, will be launched in Rwanda and expanded to Mozambique and Tanzania.