The African Development Bank ( ADB) will spend 32.7 million U.S. dollars on a project to control the spread of communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in southern Africa, the bank said on Thursday.

The project is intended to foster regional integration by aligning controls and guidelines relating to the diseases in the region.

It also aims to help 14 member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to reach the goal of "Health for All" by 2020, an ADB statement said.

The project will be implemented across eight SADC-member states -- Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Southern Africa remains the epicenter of world's AIDS crisis 25 years after the deadly disease was identified in 1981.

The region is home to 14.9 million of the world's estimated 38. 6 million people living with HIV, and accounted for about half of the 2.8 million AIDS-related deaths in 2005, the United Nations' AIDS agency UNAIDS said on Tuesday.

Enormous human loss due to the epidemic has severely eroded economic and social structures of southern African countries, some are among the poorest countries in the world.

Tuberculosis, whose prevalence is often associated with HIV/ AIDS, and malaria, which is responsible for numerous deaths of children in the region, are also identified as major disease burdens for SADC countries.

The ADB said its project would go towards an effective regional communicable disease surveillance system, improved and sustainable availability of essential medicines and the scaling up of orphans and vulnerable children best practices in member states.

The grant will finance technical assistance, equipment, office furniture, consultancies, training and recurrent costs, drugs and producing project publications.

SADC will provide 10 percent of the grant for operating costs, office space and local transportation.

Source: Xinhua