SYDNEY, Australia – Jamaica was yesterday named among Caribbean countries which have allowed money received from the World Bank to fight HIV/AIDS to sit idly.

Dr Debrework Zewdie, director of the Global HIV/AIDS Programme at the World Bank, said the institution has since stepped in to restructure the programmes to allow the money to be better used.

“Most of the money has not been used, and so it has been sitting there while people are dying, so we have to do a restructuring of the programmes for it to be used,” Dr Zewdie said.

The World Bank said it had awarded the Caribbean US$155 million, a significant portion in grants, to fight the infection. However, it was not clear what portion was awarded to Jamaica.

In the meantime, Dr Zewdie said that under the restructuring programme Caribbean countries will be required to know the areas where there have been outbreaks of the deadly sexually transmitted infection in order to better prioritise.

“If you tell me where the last 1,000 infections happened in Jamaica, then I would be able to tell you the programme needed, but we have not been able to do that in the last 10 years,” the World Bank spokeswoman said.

The situation in Jamaica, Dr Zewdie said, was not different from the multi-country AIDS programme in the Caribbean and as such was among those territories whose governments were recently informed of the restructuring programme.

She said the World Bank was committed to the Caribbean programme until regional states developed a sustainable capacity to fight HIV/AIDS.

“We believe we are almost the only sustainable funding for most of these countries and we will be there for them,” she said.

However, despite the commitment, the World Bank HIV/AIDS programme director said it was critical that the world is shown that all the money is used efficiently and effectively to save lives.

“.We have a lot of money coming in compared to five years ago, but if we don’t show cost effectiveness as soon as possible there is no guarantee that this money will still be there,” she told the Observer, shortly after making a presentation to journalists prior to the start of the Fourth IAS Conference on Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention here.

She said, too, that it was important for countries using portions of their funding to finance meaningful research to show efficiency in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

According to Dr Zewdie, with problems already surfacing with the side effects from first-line antiretroviral drugs, research must go hand-in-hand with treatment.

If this is not done, she said, the problems that could surface later could be much more expensive to address than doing it right in the first place.

She added that contrary to popular beliefs, money was available for research, however, most countries do not use it for that purpose, making it difficult for them to know what fuels the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

“Caribbean countries were so excited about the existence of drugs that they were immediately pushed out to those who need it,” Dr Zewdie said. “What should have happened is, we were to have done more in determining the right way to administer the drug.”

Dr Zewdie said the World Bank provided the Caribbean with funding for prevention, care and treatment of the disease and that the countries can decide on which areas they choose to spend the money.

She added that the money for HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean could do anything short of “buying guns and building big buildings” because the World Bank does not dictate the HIV/AIDS programmes to be implemented.