Brown to earmark £200m a year to fund Aids vaccine

Gordon Brown will pledge millions of pounds in funding today to accelerate the development of a vaccine needed to stop the global Aids epidemic.

Gordon Brown will pledge millions of pounds in funding today to accelerate the development of a vaccine needed to stop the global Aids epidemic.

The Chancellor will guarantee to buy large stocks of an Aids vaccine as part of an international scheme to ensure the market for the drug is ready-made when it becomes available.

In a speech timed to coincide with World Aids Day, Mr Brown will tell MPs that Britain will also work with the global community to increase the $600m (£315m) a year currently donated to Aids vaccine research. By contrast, private firms are spending only $100m a year on the search for a vaccine.

Ministers believe drugs companies will not spend more on research while Third World nations are too poor to be able to afford stocks of vaccines when they become available. Mr Brown wants rich countries to set up an "advance purchase scheme" which would contract to buy millions of doses of vaccine when one becomes available in order to produce the $6bn global market thought to be needed to stimulate vaccine development.

The scheme will cost Britain up to £200m a year, but ministers argue it will save millions more in Third World aid currently being spent on treatment.

Estimates suggest an effective Aids vaccine may be 10 to 15 years away, but ministers believe that timetable can be reduced if international efforts to find a drug are stepped up. They point to research showing that bringing forward the introduction of an effective vaccine by just one year could save two million lives and save the Third World $40m in health and economic costs.

The Chancellor will say: "We will also be willing to join with other countries to explore how to increase investment in Aids research, and a jointly agreed advance-purchase scheme to make new HIV vaccines accessible to Africa and meet our millennium development targets on health." Mr Brown's intervention comes as a new row broke out over European support for the fights against Aids. Gareth Thomas, the International Development minister, called on the European Commission to do more to fund research into a vaccine. The Commission spends just $26m on Aids vaccine research each year, a tenth of the United States' annual spending. Mr Thomas said yesterday: "We want the Commission to do more to provide funding for an Aids vaccine. During our EU presidency next year we will continue to focus on prevention and look at how we can build up the work on an Aids vaccine as well as promoting co-operation between Europe and the US."

Mr Brown will tell MPs that 40 countries already support his proposals for an international finance facility to double aid to the Third World. His pre-Budget report tomorrow will set out his proposals for the finance scheme, designed to raise cash for aid by securing long-term commitments from Western donors.