International AIDS Conference features a twin Bill

On day two of the International AIDS Conference, both Bill Clinton and Bill Gates gave speeches on being more effective with available money to fight the disease. There are no planned budget increases from the major governments and donors of the world, so instead the AIDS fighters will need to be less wasteful.

From the Guardian, Sarah Boseley jotted down the following notes from the speeches.

"This is a tough economic environment. Right now there isn't enough money to simply treat our way out of this epidemic," he said.

"If we keep spending our resources in exactly the same way we do today, we will fall further behind in our ability to treat everyone."

Gates cited male circumcision, which a major trial four years ago showed could reduce the chances of a man contracting HIV by 60% – although it is as yet not proven to protect women.
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Clinton, a former two-term US president, called for better use of the limited funds available in a separate speech warning that excessive resources went on bureaucracy, unnecessary trips and unread reports.

"In too many countries, too much money pays for too many people to go to too many meetings and get on too many aeroplanes to do too much technical assistance," he said. "Too much money is spent on reports that sit on shelves. Every dollar we waste a day puts a life at risk."

He called on America to lead the way and for all countries "to do some soul-searching … and actually spend the money on the people it was meant to help instead of the apparatus in the country in question".

Clinton said he did not want to blame anybody. "I was president for eight years and I had no idea it was as bad as it was," he said. But, he added: "We can fix this."

A Twin Bill on Capital Hill

From the Voice of America, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates testified on Capital Hill today about global health.

There was a different kind of health care debate Wednesday on Capitol Hill. The topic was how the United States can best build on the success of its global efforts to combat AIDS and malaria. Members of Congress received advice from two leaders in global health - a former U.S. president and a technology tycoon.

Bill Clinton and Bill Gates sat side-by-side at a witness table before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Their goal: to convince Congress to spend more to fight disease and provide basic medical services in some of the poorest countries around the world.

Former President Clinton called it a "moral imperative," and a foreign policy priority. "This is not complicated," he said. "When people think you care whether their kids live or die, they like you pretty well!"

And to those concerned about the cost of foreign aid, Mr. Clinton said it costs far less to save lives than to lose them in battle. "We have to build a world with more partners and fewer adversaries," he said.

The former president cited Haiti as an example of a country where the link between health and security is strong. "If we can build a healthy Haiti and one where the economy works well, then there is much less incentive for it to be a drug transshipment point," he said.

Together, the William J. Clinton, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations have saved countless lives in the world's poorest countries.

The Gates Foundation has invested billions of dollars in AIDS prevention and treatment, and other health challenges. And the Clinton Foundation has worked with drug manufacturers to get medicines to those most in need.

Bill Gates - the founder of the Microsoft computer software firm - told the Senate committee that improving health is an important first step in bringing countries out of poverty, and making them stable and prosperous. "The countries we are talking about have terrible health problems. We have to solve those problems to get them on the path to self-sufficiency," he said.

Gates said these efforts represent America at its best. "I do think this work has a substantial impact on how the country is viewed - a willingness to take our science, our innovation and have it benefit the poorest people in the world," he said.

Congress is working on legislation to fund an expanded U.S. government role in global health. Unlike the debate over domestic health care reform, there has been a remarkable degree of bipartisanship in promoting health internationally.

Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold has worked on Senate legislation to fund the global battle against malaria and AIDS. "This has been an area at a time when people despair of bipartisanship - bipartisanship has been superb on both of these issues for years and, I think, Americans should know,"

The programs that form the basis for President Barack Obama's global health initiative were launched by his predecessor, George W. Bush. Top Democratic and Republican lawmakers are involved in drafting legislation to expand America's global health role.

Bill Clinton becomes UN Special Envoy to Haiti

Former President Bill Clinton is now the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti. Clinton says that he wants to use the job to help to improve the lives of Haitians and to help them escape poverty.

From this Associated Press article that we found at WPBF, writer Edith Lederer attended a press conference that announced the appointment.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and was in the throes of a food crisis and political deadlock when four tropical storms battered it last fall, killing some 800 people and doing $1 billion in damage. Hunger worsened, poverty deepened and hard-won stability threatened to come apart five years after a bloody rebellion.

Clinton said he will try to do in Haiti what the U.N. attempted to do when he was the top U.N. envoy promoting recovery from the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami -- "to leave things better than they were before the natural disasters."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who appointed Clinton to the US$1-a-year post on May 19, told a news conference that "no one is better placed" than the former U.S. president to help Haiti's president and prime minister promote their new economic development program and to help ensure that governments deliver on the US$335 million they pledged in April for Haiti's recovery.

"Haiti is at a turning point," Ban said. "It has a real chance for stability and potential prosperity. ... And we wanted to send a message to the international community: Haiti needs and deserves our help."

Sitting beside the secretary-general, Clinton said that even after the devastation caused by last year's storms "I think Haiti ... has the best chance to escape the darker aspects of its history in the 35 years I have been going there."

A commentary from a former US president and a adviser to the UN secretary

Former US President Bill Clinton and Philippe Douste-Blazy a special adviser to the UN secretary general wrote an opinion piece that appeared in today's International Herald Tribune. They both encourage the wealthy nations to keep their aid promises to help the health of the world's poor.

The financial crisis has undermined our economic security. But it has also taught us that the stability of any one nation depends on its interdependence with others. A functional global marketplace depends on productive workers and healthy consumers in Africa, Asia and Latin America, as much as in the United States and Europe. As we look toward a new year, it is well to remember the importance of keeping the promise to help developing countries fight AIDS and build stronger health systems.

Development assistance is good economic policy. The returns are disproportionately in our favor given that it represents far less than 1 percent of any wealthy nation's budget. Malaria - which still kills more than a million children in Africa annually - was eliminated in the United States in the 1950s, saving more than $2 billion in today's dollars that the disease cost the American economy each year. The cost of wiping smallpox out globally is recouped every month in the economic output gained by freeing the world from its scourge.

These are lessons in what aid can save and a reminder that we should define investments in development assistance by their long-term return, not their short-term cost.

Helping others is good foreign policy. Saving lives is the right thing to do by any moral standard. It is unacceptable that extreme poverty kills 25,000 children daily. Averting this loss of life is a responsibility shared across all faiths and nations.

Aid works. We have made remarkable progress in the 21st century. Better vaccine coverage has averted 3.4 million deaths since 2000. The number of people receiving AIDS medicines has increased tenfold in five years, to 3 million. Among children, we have narrowed the gap in half that time from 1 in 40 in need receiving treatment to 1 in 4. The majority of those children are receiving the commodities they need in part thanks to a partnership between our organizations, which we started together on World AIDS Day in 2006.

Clinton Global Initiative heads to Hong Kong

There's a meeting here, a meeting there. We tell you about quite a few meetings on the News Blog.

But most of these meetings are a lot of talk and no action. Sometimes there is a pledge for action, but no one is held to their pledge. We are seeing that all too clearly now.

Former US President Bill Clinton had that same frustration while he served as President. That's why with his Clinton Global Initiative the meetings go a step further.


Clinton insists that no one attend the meetings unless they pledge to aid the poor. If that promise isn't kept, they cant come back for the next meeting.

After years of holding Global Initiative talks in New York, they now expand to Asia. Reuters Michelle Nichols details a press conference that the former President held to announce the Hong Kong meeting.

Bill Clinton says the global financial crisis likely will hurt fundraising at his first philanthropic summit in Asia, but the former U.S. president still hopes to encourage a culture of giving in the region.

His Clinton Global Initiative is a summit that gathers heads of state, celebrities, business leaders and humanitarians in a bid to tackle issues of poverty, energy and climate change, healthcare and education.

Four annual meetings have been held so far in New York where nearly 1,200 pledges have been made to take action worth $46 billion aimed at improving more than 200 million lives in 150 countries.

While continuing to hold annual meetings in New York, the initiative is also branching out to Asia and will hold a summit in Hong Kong on December 2-3 to address the region's problems in education, energy and climate change and public health.

"Yes there will be some problems with the economy probably, but I hope that the exercise will serve to swell the ranks of nongovernmental action throughout Asia," Clinton told a news teleconference.

"It may cut down on how much money we can raise but I'm not so concerned about that right now," he said. "The main thing I am trying to do is increase this feeling of civil society."

Clinton praises Bush on food aid

On World Food Day that was held on October 16th, former US President Bill Clinton admitted getting the issue of food security for poor nations wrong.

A lot of aid that goes into poor countries is food. But that makes it even harder for the small farmers of poor countries to stay profitable. In recent years, imports of food to poor nations rose, making them even more dependent on aid. If aid was ever removed, God forbid, the poor nations would be unable to sustain themselves.

Former President Clinton actually praised our current President Bush for getting food security right, but he has been stopped by politics in the US. In this Associated Press article, writer Charles Hanley has quotes from President Clinton on improving aid effectiveness to the developing world.

Former President Clinton told a U.N. gathering Thursday that the global food crisis shows 'we all blew it, including me,' by treating food crops 'like color TVs' instead of as a vital commodity for the world's poor.

Addressing a high-level event marking Oct. 16's World Food Day, Clinton also saluted President Bush _ 'one thing he got right' _ for pushing to change U.S. food aid policy. He scolded the bipartisan coalition in Congress that killed the idea of making some aid donations in cash rather than in food.

Clinton criticized decades of policymaking by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others, encouraged by the U.S., that pressured Africans in particular into dropping government subsidies for fertilizer, improved seed and other farm inputs as a requirement to get aid. Africa's food self-sufficiency declined and food imports rose.

Now skyrocketing prices in the international grain trade _ on average more than doubling between 2006 and early 2008 _ have pushed many in poor countries deeper into poverty.

'Food is not a commodity like others,' Clinton said. 'We should go back to a policy of maximum food self-sufficiency. It is crazy for us to think we can develop countries around the world without increasing their ability to feed themselves.'

He noted that food aid from wealthy nations could itself be a tool for bolstering agriculture in poor countries. Canada, for example, requires that 50 percent of its aid go as cash _ not as Canadian grain _ to buy crops grown locally in Africa and other recipient countries.

U.S. law, however, requires that almost all U.S. aid be American-grown food, which benefits U.S. farmers but undercuts local food crops. Bush proposed earlier this year that 25 percent of future U.S. aid be given in cash.

'A bipartisan coalition (in Congress) defeated him,' Clinton said. 'He was right and both parties that defeated him were wrong.'

Clinton also criticized the heavy U.S. reliance on corn to produce ethanol, which increased demand for the crop and helped drive up grain prices worldwide.

Clinton calls on business to end hunger

from Forbes

By MICHAEL ASTOR

Former President Bill Clinton and activist-rocker Bob Geldof called on business leaders to do their part to help solve the international food crisis that pushed 75 million people into hunger and poverty last year alone.

Clinton said businesses could help solve the problem by providing farm credits, help improve agricultural productivity and foster storage and distribution systems in developing countries.

"This is not a thing that government can do alone. We have to have heavy private sector involvement," Clinton said. "The money here is not going to be massive and the payoff is going to be great."

He said he believed the future would see much more food produced locally and that would help reduce world hunger.

"The energy prices and supply reality alone, the inevitable necessity to get the developing world involved with the developed world in the fight against climate change, all of these things are going to drive us toward more agricultural self-sufficiency," Clinton said.

Clinton and Geldof spoke at a luncheon Wednesday devoted to bringing the private sector into a partnership with government and civil society to help meet the UN millennium development goal of halving the number of hungry people on Earth by 2015.

Currently there are some 923 million people going hungry on the planet and world food production will have to double by 2050 to keep up with population growth, according to the UN.

Geldof challenged the private sector to look at the problem - especially in Africa, the world's poorest continent, as a business opportunity rather than a charity case.

"There should be a logical approach to the business of Africa, a continent that has yet to be built and is open for business," he said. "There's nothing that means you have to go there with a bleeding heart, anything different than just creating profit, opportunity and growth."

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Geldof and Clinton team up for African education project

from the Daily India

London, June 30: Sir Bob Geldof has joined forces with former U.S. president Bill Clinton to launch a 4.7 million pounds campaign for the education of children in Africa.

The pair hopes that the project will provide more access to schools for 1.2 million children in Malawi and Rwanda.

The funds are expected to pay for the building of four new training centres and 4,000 teachers to help give African kids a better start in life.

"We are trying to make a hole in the huge need Rwanda and Malawi have for primary teachers," The Sun quoted Clinton, as saying.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Bill Clinton has 1,000 pledges to aid world's poor

from Reuters India

By Timothy Gardner

NEW YORK, Bill Clinton's philanthropic summit has spurred nearly 1,000 commitments in the past three years from business, nonprofit and government leaders that aim to improve the lives of 200 million of the world's poor.

In a mid-year update of his Clinton Global Initiative summit held each September, Clinton gave a progress report of the commitments, including one by Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N.'s climate science panel.

"He has a little idea with massive potential implications," Clinton said about Pachauri's CGI commitment, "Lighting a Million Lives in India." Since the agreement, Pachauri's nonprofit group, called The Energy and Resources Institute, has brought 30,000 solar-powered lanterns to 300 Indian villages.

The lanterns allow children to study and adults to work past sunset in rural India, where some 78 million homes lack electricity, while eliminating unhealthy kerosene lantern fumes as well as greenhouse gas emissions.

The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) commitments focus on education, climate, health and poverty alleviation. Some 200 have already been completed, CGI said.

Other commitments range from $100,000 in support by the Hashoo Foundation for women beekeepers in Pakistan to a estimated $1.5 million in support from the United Methodist Church to fight malaria in the Ivory Coast with insecticide-treated nets.

Donning glasses to read the details of one of the commitments, Clinton said, "George Washington once said, 'I'm going blind for my country,' and I'm going blind for my candidate." It was Clinton's only reference to his wife Hillary's presidential campaign during the New York event.

CGI pledges are not required to lay out a minimum amount of money, but they are binding in a sense: parties that do not live up to them are barred from the annual summit, a glitzy mix of global leaders and celebrities.

Visa Inc on Friday made the CGI's first commitment of 2008, pledging to increase financial literacy for 10 million people over five years.

"Our products are very useful tools in enabling the unbanked to enter the formal financial system," said Doug Michelman, head of global corporate relations for Visa. He said the products can be used for small loans or salary payments, allowing people to avoid check cashing fees.

The company, which went public last month, did not reveal how much money it planned to commit.

Nobody should die of malaria, says Clinton

from the Daily News

FORMER US President Bill Clinton declared in Dar es Salaam yesterday that no person should die of malaria, the major tropical killer disease for which simple remedies exist.

Speaking at the launch of an Artemisinin based Combination Therapies (ACT) pilot programme, minutes after he arrived in the Tanzanian capital, Mr Clinton said the cost of drugs will be subsidised by 95 per cent to make even the poorest of the poor afford treatment.

“No one should die of malaria. We are here to save people from dying of malaria,” he insisted in an open address to thousands of people at Pugu Kajiungeni on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam.

Contemporary America’s most iconic president turned philanthropist, Mr Clinton has formed the Clinton Foundation for HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) to combat the killer disease which has no cure, Tuberculosis and malaria.

The scheme could finally serve as a model for treating malaria in Africa as a whole, where people die basically of poverty and neglect. Malaria is caused by parasites carried by mosquitoes which in other parts of the world have been genetically altered not to transmit the disease.

An ACT dose sells for 300/- (dollars 25 cents) in government hospitals and dollars 10 (about 12,500/-) in private chemists, which is colossal amount for a majority of persons living under two dollars a day. The former president checked out drug prices for first hand experience from three pharmacies and said it was important to engage the private sector in the war against disease.

However, the programme will first be tried out in Maswa district, Shinyanga region and Kongwa district in Dodoma region. It was not immediately clear what criterion was used to pick the two districts.

Earlier, the Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Professor David Mwakyusa, said an estimated 100,000 people died of malaria every year in Tanzania, most being pregnant women and under five children.The programme is a joint effort with the government of Tanzania, Population Services International (PSI) and receives support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.