The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is partnering with U.S.-based pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co. to provide $100 million in cash and medicine to the beleaguered southern African nation of Botswana, Reuters News reports.

Botswana has the highest HIV infection rate per person of any nation in the world, according to the UNAIDS agency, with a full one-third of all adults having the disease. The next generation also is at peril, because it's estimated that at least two-thirds of all 15-year-old Botswanan boys will die of AIDS before they reach 50.

The HIV/AIDS problem is so severe that Botswanan President Festus Mogae recently said his nation is "threatened with extinction," Reuters reports.

This new relief effort is an equal partnership between the world's largest private foundation and one of the world's largest drug companies.

The Gates Foundation will provide $50 million over five years to boost Botswana's basic health care system. Merck's contribution will come in the form of program development and management, and donations of antiretroviral drugs.

Merck also has announced that German pharmaceuticals company Boehringer Ingelheim will contribute medicines that combat mother-to-child HIV transmission to the Botswana effort.

(Boehringer Ingelheim has announced it will go further by offering its VIRAMUNE [nevirapine] drug that combats HIV-1 transmission from mothers to infants for free in developing countries around the world.)

International consumer products firm Unilever NV/Plc also will help the Botswana effort by setting up drug distribution systems in that nation.

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