PROVIDENCE — There’s more than enough money in the developed world to address the food and health needs of the poorest people on the planet; we just haven’t chosen to apply it to eradicate extreme poverty, said Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and an adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

“There’s plenty of money in the world, easily, for everything,” said Sachs, addressing a packed lecture hall at Brown University yesterday. “For less than 1 percent of the income of the rich world, all of the basic needs of the impoverished world could be met.”

Jeffrey Sachs and his wife, Dr. Sonia Sachs, a pediatrician and medical director of the Millennium Village Project, delivered the keynote address yesterday at the World AIDS Day Symposium at Brown. The Sachs were also honored for their work on the Millennium Village Project, a development and health project funded by the United Nations. The Sachs received the “Hope is a Vaccine” award from the Global Alliance to Immunize against AIDS Vaccine Foundation.

Jeff Sachs, an economist, is president and cofounder of the Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty. In 2004 and 2005, Sachs was named one of the 100 most influential leaders in the world by Time Magazine, and is the 2005 recipient of the Sargent Shriver Award for Equal Justice. He wrote a best-selling book in 2005 titled The End of Poverty.

Sachs said that Africa is the “epicenter” of the “health and AIDS crisis” of the world.

“Everybody everywhere should have access to basic health care and have their basic health needs met,” he said. Yet “we are in the midst of the greatest pandemic in the world,” the African AIDS crisis in which some 9,000 new infections happened every day. “In 2000, there were at least a couple billion people without health care. That’s a preposterous situation on our planet. Never before have we had so much…never before have we had such tools.”

A scourge such as malaria could be greatly reduced across Africa by employing $5 mosquito nets and doses of $1 treatment pills, he said.

Much of Africa has a “unique disease burden,” he said, which includes AIDS, other infectious diseases and respiratory infections, malaria, high infant mortality and ailments from poor nutrition. Africa, he said, has not produced enough food to feed the continent.

“Hunger is probably still the core instigator of war on the planet,” he said.

“Africa is a hungry continent right now.” People without enough to eat often suffer from depressed immune systems that leave them more vulnerable to infection.

African farms are also “hungry;” the land produces less than farms in developed countries because the soil is starved for nutrients. Fertilizer and better seed could make a significant difference, Sachs said.

“Africa needs help to produce more food.” But there is simply not enough money in many African nations to address extreme poverty.

In the landlocked southern African country of Malawi, for instance, income is about $200 per capita, Sachs said. If the government collected 15 percent in taxes, that’s just $30 per citizen to pay for all aspects of government: roads, schools, the power grid, science and technology, research and public health.

Sachs is behind the concept that an investment of $60 annually per person can yield significant health advances. “You don’t have to make places rich in order to overcome the disease burden,” said Sachs.

Dr. Sonia Sachs spoke about the techniques used to improve the lives of the extreme poor through the Millennium Village project, such as mosquito netting around beds, fertilizer and better seeds for farmers, access to clean water, and improved clinics and better access to medical care.