The Ford Foundation has granted an additional US$400,000 to a training program on the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS and venereal diseases in southwest China's Yunnan Province, the provincial family planning association said Thursday.

The fund will be used in the next three years in the training of medical and educational staff in 14 selected counties to spread knowledge and skills on the prevention of the pandemic disease.

The program's three-year preliminary period began in 2002 in three counties with a US$80,000 Ford Foundation grant, the largest of its kind in the US.

By July this year, some 800 villagers had benefited from the program.

Yunnan, which borders Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, is one of the areas worst affected by HIV/AIDS and other venereal epidemics in China. The province registered 28,391 HIV carriers between 1989 to 2004, 744 of whom have died.

With the intention to focus on solving humankind's most pressing problems, the Ford Foundation was founded in 1936 to enhance democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation and advance human achievement.

(Xinhua News Agency September 30, 2005)