Continuing its commitment to battling the HIV/AIDS crisis, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Wednesday announced $48.4 million more for a wide range of efforts, including support to combat the AIDS orphans crisis.

The latest grants follow a joint effort between the Gates Foundation and Merck & Co. announced earlier in the week, in which the foundation will provide $50 million in cash to help improve Botswana's medical system.

The grants were announced during the 13th International AIDS Conference being held this week in Durban, South Africa.

The new grants include a $25 million pledge to the Contraceptive Research and Development (CONRAD) Program at Eastern Virginia Medical School to develop new, more-effective contraceptives and microbicides that protect women from sexually-transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS.

CONRAD researchers will collaborate with researchers from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Family Health International.

The foundation also is providing $15 million to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation to offer access to and the use of anti-retroviral drugs during labor and immediately after birth to prevent HIV transmission from mother to infant.

Another $7 million will go to the Health Systems Trust of South Africa for its "loveLife" campaign, which educates young people about how to reduce the risk of contracting HIV. This grant will be matched by a $7 million Henry L. Kaiser Family Foundation gift.

A $1 million grant will boost the Childreach organization's efforts to help African children who have HIV/AIDS, or are orphans because of HIV/AIDS. Childreach will partner with CARE, Save the Children, the World Conference of Religion and Peace and community organizations in Africa to provide educational and medical services.

AIDS orphans will be even more of a social and health crisis in the future, as more than 30 million children around the world are left without parents by the end of the decade, according to new estimates by the USAID organization. The USAID figures are significantly higher than UNICEF estimates because they figure in children who likely will lose either a father or a mother, or both parents.

UNICEF officials say more than 20 million children worldwide will lose either their mothers or both parents by decade's end because AIDS-related deaths.

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