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Clinton joins Aids fight
17/06/2003 09:17 - (SA)
New York - Former President Bill Clinton said he hopes to use his foundation to treat at least 700 000 Aids patients in Africa and the Caribbean - and possibly many more - during the next five years.
"Nothing would please me more than if instead of 700 000 or 800 000 we have 8 million within a couple of years," Clinton said Monday. "But in order to do it we not only have to have the money and the availability of the medicine, we have to have the infrastructure."
The William J Clinton Presidential Foundation is working with the governments of Rwanda, Mozambique, Tanzania and several Caribbean nations to fund Aids prevention and treatment.
Clinton said he hoped the foundation could develop an Aids treatment and prevention model that could be exported to other countries such as India and the republics of the former Soviet Union.
As an example of their work, Clinton said foundation officials were able to cut the cost of the antiretroviral drugs that can prolong the lives of people with Aids from $3 500 a year to $500 a year in the Bahamas by negotiating directly with drug suppliers.
"There's a hell of a difference between $3 500 a year and $500 a year," he said.
Clinton, who announced his foundation's Aids initiative last July, said many developing countries are hampered by health care systems that are ill-equipped to deal with high rates of HIV infection - but not, as in the past, by widespread denial of the problem.
"By and large, particularly in the Caribbean and in Africa, there's not much denial anymore," Clinton said. "They want to do the right thing. There's an openness to making these changes and cooperation at the local level that you didn't see four or five years ago."
Asked about South Africa, where one in nine people is infected with HIV and activists have long accused the government of inaction, Clinton said, "I hope there'll be something to say about that in the coming month or so." He did not elaborate. - Sapa-AP
- SAPA
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