[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 48 (Monday, December 4, 2000)]
[Pages 2953-2956]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on World AIDS Day

December 1, 2000

    Thank you very much. Thank you. Belynda, thank you for your 
wonderful remarks. I'm not going anywhere. I'm just going to be in a 
different line of work, you know. [Laughter] I'll still be there for 
you.
    I want you all to know, this remarkable woman actually had a minor 
car accident yesterday and was told not to come here, but she showed up 
anyway. And that's the kind of commitment we need from people.
    Archbishop Ndugane, I'm delighted to be on the podium with you in 
this beautiful chapel at Howard. And as you know, I admired your 
predecessor, Archbishop Tutu, my friend, and I can see he has a worthy 
successor. Your remarks were wise, and we thank you, sir, very much for 
what you said.
    I thank President Swygert for making us welcome at Howard. And I 
would like to acknowledge a couple of people--first, a Member of our 
United States Congress from Oakland, California, and the champion of 
America, doing more in the global AIDS effort, Representative Barbara 
Lee. Thank you very much. Thank you. I also was honored to ride over 
here with our former United Nations Ambassador and Congressman and my 
great friend Andrew Young. I thank him for his part here.
    And Belinda, I thank you for what you said about Sandy Thurman. I 
knew she wasn't a Barbie doll when I appointed her. [Laughter] She had 
actually spent a lot of her life working in Atlanta at the grassroots 
with people with HIV and AIDS. And I tried to fill a lot of positions in 
Government with people who don't often get to serve, because sometimes 
the best qualified people to serve are the people that are out there on 
the front lines. And if they spend their lives on the front lines, they 
don't have enough time to play up to the politicians so they can get 
these appointments. But somehow I found Sandy, and she's been wonderful, 
and I thank her and all the members of our Advisory Council, many of 
whom are here today.
    I want to offer a special word of welcome to the distinguished 
religious leaders and citizens who have come here from around the world, 
including the First Lady of Lesotho, Mrs. Mathato Mosisili. And we have, 
I think, 23 others--we have 23 others here from Africa alone, who are 
here to focus on the HIV/AIDS issue as part of the State Department's 
international visitors program. We have religious leaders here from 
Africa, from Asia, from Latin America, and we thank them all for being 
here.
    Today we have come together--people from all over the world, from 
different circumstances--to ask ourselves a simple, stark question: 
whether we are prepared to do what is necessary to save millions of 
lives, to save the lives of those who are living with HIV and AIDS and 
all those who might yet avoid it. How we answer will depend upon how 
well we work together as partners across lines of nationality, faith, 
religion, color, sexual orientation. It will depend upon, in equal 
measure, our will and our wallet.
    And it will depend upon, in some places, still, sadly, going beyond 
denial. I don't know whether this works when translated into French and 
the other languages that are here, but my daughter's generation has a 
wonderful saying, that denial is not just a river in Egypt. [Laughter] 
And we even have to laugh, you know, sometimes just to keep going. But 
that also is important, and I want to highlight some of the heroes in 
that struggle later.
    In the United States there are millions of people involved in the 
struggle against HIV and AIDS. They are in clinics and community-based 
organizations across the land, offering information and testing to those 
at risk, treatment and care to nearly a million people living with HIV, 
dignity to thousands who are dying. Churches, synagogues, mosques, and 
temples here are, more and

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more, speaking out with a single, clear voice about the importance of 
prevention as well as care.
    For the last few years I have tried to put our Government on the 
side of this fight. We created an Office of AIDS Research at the 
National Institutes of Health, and the White House Office of AIDS 
National Policy. We have the first-ever national AIDS strategy. We have 
the first biomedical research plan, and we have expanded health 
insurance options for people with HIV and AIDS.
    Our overall Federal funding has more than doubled over the last 8 
years, and funding for care is up almost 400 percent; help to buy drugs 
in this country up more than 1,000 percent. As Congress comes back to 
work, I hope that it will ensure that our global and domestic AIDS 
programs actually receive the funding increases they are currently 
slated to receive this year, thanks to people like Representative 
Barbara Lee.
    As Belynda Dunn's story illustrates, marrying our money to our 
intentions is a formula for real progress here in the United States, a 
formula for delivering more powerful anti-HIV drugs to more Americans, 
for helping more HIV-positive pregnant women avoid passing the virus to 
their babies, for providing better access to health care and housing for 
those living with HIV. It is a formula, in other words, for people 
living longer and better lives.
    Today, the mortality rate for HIV and AIDS in the United States is 
down more than 70 percent since 1995. The death rate from the infection 
is at its lowest rate since 1987. For those of you here from our country 
who have worked on this, you can be justifiably proud. But we must be 
humbled by how very far we all have to go, especially around the world.
    Today's reality is much worse than the worst case scenarios of just 
10 years ago. At the beginning of the 1990's, health experts told us 
that between 15 million and 20 million people would be living with HIV 
this year. Well, the real number is 36 million. The religious leaders 
from around the world who are here understand that these numbers mean 
something quite stark in human terms, not only for the individuals and 
the families but, as the Archbishop intimated, for whole nations.
    When the disease threatens to triple child mortality and to reduce 
life expectancy by 20 years in some African countries, it is time to say 
that AIDS is also a moral crisis. When South Africa's GDP--listen to 
this--South Africa's GDP is expected to be 17 percent lower in 2010 
because of AIDS, it is time to say that AIDS is an economic crisis. When 
10 times more Africans died of AIDS last year than in all the 
continent's wars combined and when the fastest-growing infection rates 
are now in Eastern Europe and the nations of the former Soviet Union--
complicated in many countries by a virtual breakdown of the public 
health systems there--where nations are already struggling against great 
odds to build prosperity and democracy, it is time to say that AIDS is 
also an international security crisis.
    Once we recognize that AIDS is all these things, it becomes crystal 
clear that we have to use every available tool to fight it and that the 
United States, because we have been blessed at this particular moment in 
history with exceptional prosperity, has an extra responsibility to take 
a leadership role.
    Many developing countries are doing remarkable things to help 
themselves. By focusing its resources on prevention, Uganda became the 
first country in sub-Saharan Africa to reverse its own epidemic, nearly 
halving its HIV prevalence. But in too many nations, resources are 
simply insufficient, and the gap between what people want to do and what 
they can afford to do is denying millions a chance to survive the 
onslaught. Together, we must do more to close the gap.
    Today our National Institutes of Health is releasing the first-ever 
strategic plan for international AIDS research, a $100 million blueprint 
for pursuing new research opportunities with universities in over 50 
countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Our administration 
has also launched the LIFE initiative, that in the last 2 years will 
likely triple U.S. investment in international HIV-AIDS efforts.
    That is why we fought for and won passage of the global HIV/AIDS and 
TB Relief Act, which authorizes additional funding for prevention, care, 
and vaccine development, and

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why I signed an Executive order to help make AIDS drugs more affordable 
in sub-Saharan Africa, and why we are pushing Congress to pass--to 
respond to the Archbishop's comment--a vaccine tax credit and to put 
more resources behind the World Bank's AIDS trust fund.
    Right now, it is a problem for our pharmaceutical companies because 
they know that while there is an enormous need for an AIDS vaccine, the 
people who need it the worst are the least able to pay for it. And we 
know that research is very expensive. So the best way we can help get 
the research done--we get the medicine, and then we'll worry about how 
to get it out there; we can do that, but we have to get the breakthrough 
first--is, in effect, gives these companies a tax credit for the 
research they do, so that the taxpayers share a hefty portion of the 
cost. And I hope and pray that the Congress will agree to adopt that 
when they come back in just a few days, or early next year at the very 
latest.
    The Peace Corps is training every one of its 2,400 volunteers in 
Africa, every one of them, as prevention counselors. And the issue of 
HIV and AIDS in developing countries was put on the agenda this year for 
the annual G-8 Summit. I also made it an important part of our 
relationship with the European Union, and I have worked hard, as the 
Archbishop said, for debt relief and for mobilizing billions of dollars 
for the fight against AIDS. And finally, that is why the United States 
placed HIV and AIDS squarely before both the U.N. Security Council and 
the United Nations Millennium Summit.
    This effort is now on the international agenda. We've got a long way 
to go, but those of you who worked hard to put it on the world's agenda 
should also know that you have succeeded, and we're only going to go 
forward, not backward, now.
    Now, despite these efforts, we all know a lot more is needed. Much, 
much more is needed to make drugs for AIDS and related infectious 
diseases more affordable and accessible everywhere. I told you, just in 
the United States, with all of our wealth, we increased funding to help 
people buy drugs here in this country by a 1,000 percent, tenfold, in 8 
years, and we didn't get a tenfold increase in drugs, because of the 
increase in the costs. So we know that we have to do more to help 
developing nations in this area.
    We know that more is needed to ensure that countries have the health 
care infrastructure needed to effectively deliver the drugs and the 
treatment. As I said a moment ago, one of the things that really 
concerns me about the rising rates in some of the nations of the former 
Soviet Union is that they are accompanied by a real deterioration in the 
public health systems, systems which once worked under a very different 
social and political structure and have not yet been replaced by the 
kind of grassroots community networks that we see in a lot of other 
developing countries that were not part of a totalitarian system before. 
And it's something we have to work very, very hard on.
    But let's not forget, as so many of you have proved, even limited 
resources, well used, can go a long way. And let's all remember that, 
for all their differences, the fight against AIDS here in the United 
States and the fight abroad have much in common. To begin, we need to 
understand that patterns of infection in the U.S. now actually mirror 
those found elsewhere, with the burden falling most heavily on women, 
young people, poor people, and people of color. That makes our 
challenges more alike than different, both practically and morally. It 
means we must be more vigilant, both in targeting our resources and in 
overcoming prejudice.
    Last August, in Nigeria, I was honored to meet John Ibekwe. He was 
sitting here on the front row, but his daughter started crying, and he 
took her out, which is a great expression of family values--[laughter]--
because he knew I was going to introduce him, and he took care of his 
child, anyway. [Laughter]
    At an event during my trip, he told the story of his great love for 
his wife, whom he married even though she was HIV-positive, and family 
and friends disapproved. He told how he pleaded with and lobbied with 
his pastor to persuade him that it was the morally right thing to do. He 
talked about how when he married, his wife became pregnant, and he 
became HIV-positive. And then he struggled to hold a job in the face of 
great prejudice. He told us how he saved enough money somehow for the 
drugs that allowed his baby to be born without the virus.

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    And when he told this story, the President of Nigeria, President 
Obasanjo, and his wife, stood on the stage, and they embraced John and 
his wife. I'm told the image had an electrifying impact all over Nigeria 
on how people should think about and deal with people with AIDS.
    As I said, John and his daughter just walked out, but his wife is 
here, and I'd like to ask her to stand up. [Applause] Thank you. There 
they are. Thank you. John, with that kind of timing, I think you have a 
future in politics. [Laughter] That was well done.
    Now, let me say something very serious. The second thing we have to 
do is to remember that AIDS everywhere is still 100 percent preventable. 
Prevention is the most effective tool in our arsenal. No matter the 
cultural or religious factors to be overcome, families must talk about 
the facts of life before too many more learn the facts of death. Meeting 
both these challenges--overcoming stigma and overcoming silence--will be 
impossible without the moral leadership that in so many places only 
religious leaders, like those who are here today, can provide.
    In our tradition it has been said that AIDS is an epidemic of 
Biblical proportions. Maybe that refers to the sheer geographic scope or 
perhaps the numbers of people or the enormous scale of suffering. But I 
think it also is an apt phrase because it implies that there is a 
required moral response.
    In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it says that when we 
bear one another's burdens, we fulfill the law of God. So I ask you to 
go forth here, remembering that a happy heart is good medicine, too. Do 
not grow weary in doing this. Know that the sequencing of the human 
genome will dramatically hasten the day when we will find a medical 
cure. But in the meanwhile, there are millions, indeed tens and tens of 
millions, of people whose lives are riding on our common efforts. We can 
do this if we do it together.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 12:13 p.m. in the Rankin Chapel at Howard 
University. In his remarks, he referred to Belynda Dunn, chair, National 
Association of People With AIDS; Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndugane, 
Archbishop of South Africa, and his predecessor Archbishop Desmond Tutu; 
H. Patrick Swygert, president, Howard University; John Ibekwe, 
president, Nigerian Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS; and 
President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, and his wife, Stella.