YANGON, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Three-Diseases (3-D) Fund has provided nine non-governmental organizations in Myanmar with a total of 630,000 U.S. dollars to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB)and malaria this year, the local Flower News reported Monday.

    The fund will be used in the one-year anti-three-disease project in states and divisions of Kachine, Mon, Shan, Kayin, Rakhine, Yangon and Mandalay.

    The 3-D fund had provided the country with 4 million dollars for use in the fiscal year 2007-08, the initial year of its five-year project to fight the three diseases, earlier report said.

    The entire 3-D fund project, worth about 100 million U.S. dollars, was set to be funded by a group of six donors -- the European Commission, Sweden's Sida, the Netherlands, United Kingdom's Department for International Development, Norway and Australia's Aus AID.

    The 3-D fund was developed in 2006 to compensate for grants which were suspended in August 2005 by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

    According to a latest report of the UNAIDS, the number of people infected with HIV in Myanmar dropped to 240,000 in 2007 from 300,000 in 2001.

    HIV/AIDS is among the three major communicable diseases of national concern designated by Myanmar. The other two diseases are tuberculosis and malaria.

    Myanmar treats the three diseases as priority with the main objectives of reducing the morbidity and mortality in a bid to become no longer a public problem and meet the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations.

    In its prevention efforts against malaria, the Myanmar government has distributed 50,000 long lasting insecticidal nets annually since 2000 to hardly accessible areas of national races with up to 400,000 existing bed nets also impregnated with insecticide annually since then.