[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 163 (Thursday, November 29, 2001)]
[House]
[Page H8571]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             WORLD AIDS DAY

  (Mr. PAYNE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Speaker, according to UNAIDS, each day 17,000 people 
die from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria worldwide. While the 
world's attention is appropriately focused on September 11 and our new 
war on international terrorism, we cannot ignore this ongoing tragedy. 
We have a tragedy occurring daily with HIV and AIDS, a tragedy on the 
scale of the black plague of the Middle Ages. The United States, as has 
been mentioned earlier, should be putting at least $1 billion in the 
global fund to fight HIV and AIDS.
  In Zimbabwe, for example, AIDS has taken so many lives that 
agricultural output has decreased by 50 percent in the past 5 years. By 
2005 there will be more than 10 million orphan children in Africa. The 
number of AIDS deaths can be expected to grow within the next 10 years 
to more than double the number of deaths caused by all other illnesses 
that we know.
  We can do more. We must do more. It is the right thing to do more.

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