KAMPALA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- International programmes fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS are facing a ten-billion-dollar shortfall this year, the head of UNAIDS said Monday in the Ugandan capital Kampala.

"There had been a reduction in funding for the AIDS programs on a global level for the first time in 15 years," UNAIDS executive director, Michel Sidibe, told a news conference at an African Union Summit.

"We need 26 billion dollars to fight HIV/AIDS. Of this 16 million dollars has been mobilized," he added. "The gap is huge and we are worried."

Michel Kazatchkine, executive director Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, said that the financial crisis had affected funding.

"Public funding for AIDS programmes became a problem in developed countries because they had to take on austerity measures in the wake of the crisis," he said. "Countries like China, Brazil and India should also move in and have a share in the funding of the programs."

The theme of the AU heads-of-state summit is maternal, infant and child health development in Africa, but it has been overshadowed by the growing crisis in Somalia.

Somalia's Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab carried out twin suicide blasts in Kampala during the World Cup final on July 11, killing 76 people.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is now using the summit to push for more AU peacekeeping troops to be sent to Somalia to back the approximately 6,000 Ugandan and Burundian soldiers propping up the weak Western-backed government.

Copyright 2010 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH