Mexico City - August 6, 2008 - This week, IRD is exhibiting at the 2008 Global AIDS Conference in Mexico City to promote HIV/AIDS advocacy, awareness, prevention, and treatment worldwide. IRD's expanding role at the conference is representative of its growing HIV/AIDS programs, funded in part by the governments of the U.S. and Canada as well as private-sector partner Unilever. The conference follows passage of landmark legislation - the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) - to combat AIDS around the world.

"IRD commends the U.S. government and the global community for the re-affirmation and expansion of its support for combating HIV/AIDS," said Lali Chania, Acting Director of IRD's Health sector. "IRD already works closely with the U.S. government to implement health programs, including on HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness programs, and we're looking forward to working with them more in the future."

The five-year extension of the unprecedented U.S. effort to fight HIV/AIDS around the world authorizes $48 billion for prevention, treatment and care where they are most needed, and expands the program substantially to reach millions of people, primarily in Africa. It dramatically boosts HIV/AIDS programming related to women and girls; strengthens health systems in countries hardest hit by the virus that causes AIDS; authorizes HIV/AIDS programs to include links to food and nutrition, education and health care programs; and increases U.S. contributions to the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

IRD HIV/AIDS programs have included support for home-based care, awareness and prevention, stigma reduction, and organizational development for local groups. We work closely with affected communities to develop solutions that are appropriate for them, and to provide training to ensure that programs will continue even after IRD's role has finished.

And in the U.S., IRD advocates on behalf of children's health in developing countries. For example, while PEPFAR does much to help fight AIDS globally and also provides $5 billion for malaria, a top cause of death for young children in sub-Saharan Africa, these two diseases comprise only 11 percent of the the causes of death for nearly 10 million children under age 5. Largely preventable and treatable causes like diarrhea, pneumonia, and complications at birth are the biggest culprits. IRD supports the Global Child Survival Act, presently before Congress, to strengthen U.S. leadership and investment in low-cost, effective, lifesaving interventions like vitamins, antibiotics and vaccines that could help save the lives of millions of newborns and young children in the world's poorest countries.