Millions die 'due to lack of UN aid'

Millions of people are dying because of the industrialised nations' failure to pay even half the money they have promised to world population programmes, the United Nations said yesterday.

Millions of people are dying because of the industrialised nations' failure to pay even half the money they have promised to world population programmes, the United Nations said yesterday.

Dr Nafis Sadik, the retiring head of the UN population fund, said the lack of money had led to a severe shortage of condoms and reduced family planning services in many countries. That has increased the spread of Aids and hastened the explosion in the world population, which is growing by 75 million a year. The UN report showed that only $2.1bn (£1.3bn) of the $5.7bn promised by wealthy nations in 1994 had been received. Western countries such as America, France and Germany were doing "very badly" on meeting their prom-ised contributions. Although the British contribution to the fund has more than doubled in the past six years to £15m, it was described as "less than adequate".

Dr Sadik said: "These are large countries which should be doing a lot more. If they don't the result in several years time will be very dismal. Condom supplies are getting disrupted at a time when demand is soaring. We are being forced to roll back sexual health programmes in many countries and limit the number of new health clinics."

Alex Marshall, author of the UN report, The State of the World Population 2000, said the world's biggest supplier of condoms had to halve the number of contraceptives it distributed last year because of funding problems. "It means people are dying," he said.

Dr Sadik said that women were suffering the most from the crippling lack of resources, largely because of cultural and religious discrimination. "Their medical concerns are given less attention than men's."

Providing family planning was the best way of fighting disease and population growth, she added.

The report showed that one-third of all pregnancies - 80 million a year - were unwanted and that, if women could have the number of children they wanted, the average family size in many countries would fall by one child.