World Bank launches new plan to help fight HIV/AIDS in South Asia

The World Bank has launched a new initiative aimed at promoting new approaches to reducing the stigma and discrimination associated with HIV/AIDS in South Asia.

Working in partnership with the United Nations and private sector groups, the organisation's Development Marketplace competition hopes to encourage proposals for small-scale projects that have the potential to be up-scaled and repeated elsewhere, AllHeadlineNews.com reported.

Projects can be awarded up to $40,000 (£19,400), with the winners to be selected in May 2008 by a panel of both World Bank and independent HIV/AIDS experts.

"Stigma and discrimination seriously undermines efforts to fight HIV and AIDS," Praful Patel, World Bank vice president for the South Asia region, told the website. "It also marginalizes people at risk and living with the disease contributing further to their social isolation and rejection."

"This competition offers a unique opportunity to channel small grants directly to community organizations and non-governmental organisations to implement imaginative approaches that will help change the attitudes and practices that undermine effective programs," he added.

Over the past seven years the Development Marketplace initiative has awarded nearly $34 million (£16.5 million) to around 800 small-scale, local projects.

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