Former President Bill Clinton on Monday said his foundation would spend some $10 million this year to help treat 10,000 children afflicted with HIV/AIDS in 10 countries, particularly in rural Africa.

About half a million children worldwide are estimated to be living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Only about 15,000 to 25,000 are receiving treatment in developing nations, and half of those are in Brazil or Thailand, countries with substantial anti-AIDS programs, Clinton said.

“One in every six AIDS death each year is a child,” Clinton told a news conference at his Harlem offices. “Yet children represent less than one of every 30 persons getting treatment in developing countries today.”

The former president said the Clinton Foundation would spend some $10 million for programs in rural areas, in conjunction with UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Fund and other organizations. Their goal would be to reach 60,000 children by the end of 2006.

The program includes an agreement with CIPLA Ltd., an India-based pharmaceutical company, to supply pediatric AIDS drugs to kids at less than 50 percent of current market prices.

Pediatric medicines have already been ordered for China, the Dominican Republic, Lesotho, Rwanda and Tanzania, with treatment set to begin as early as May in China, UNICEF said,

Brazil and Thailand are excluded because of their success in providing treatment and prevention programs.

Stephen Lewis, the U.N. special envoy for AIDS in Africa, called the action a “breakthrough for the treatment of children” because they had previously lacked care throughout so much of the developing world.

Clinton said he was particularly interested in treating children at the orphanage in Calcutta, run by the late Mother Teresa. “I promised Mother Teresa before she died I would go to her orphanage,” he said.