Bill Clinton talks Africa on Meet the Press

President Bill Clinton appeared on Meet the Press this Sunday and had a chance to speak out about the Clinton Global Initiative and Africa. When pressed by MTP host Tom Brokaw about why Americans facing an economic crisis should care about global poverty, Clinton remarked that providing aid to Africa addressed the two main concerns in the upcoming US presidential election– namely, “how to restore economic strength and broadly shared prosperity and how to restore America’s position in the world.”

Partial transcript below:

MR. BROKAW: When you ran successfully for president in 1992, the unofficial slogan was, “It’s the economy, stupid.” It’s hard to imagine, given the political and especially the financial climate that we’re all living in now that someone can say it’s about aid to Africa, stupid, or it’s about AIDS, stupid, or it’s about doing something about poverty, stupid. Is this not going to be an issue, your great work here as the Clinton Global Initiative, in this campaign? Is it going to have to be set off to the side?

PRES. CLINTON: Well, I think the answer is it will not–it’s not nearly as big an issue for the two thirds of American people who are having trouble paying their own bills and are worried about their future. On the other hand, I think there–the two great issues in America in this election are how to restore economic strength and broadly shared prosperity and how to restore America’s position in the world. I think–if I were making the CGI argument in a political speech, I’d say we’re not going to have the America we want unless prosperity is broadly shared, and to do that, we have to have economic opportunity in the poorest parts of America. And in the world, the places where America is popular today in the world, really popular, 10 countries in central and eastern Africa. Look at the Pew poll. Wildly popular. Why? Because they see us through the prism of President Bush’s AIDS and malaria programs and the work the Gates Foundation does, the work that I do, the work that others do. So we can–this should be presented to the American people that as a part of our participation in the interdependent world, we actually make more partners and fewer enemies.

MR. BROKAW: One of the concerns that the Gates Foundation has, that everything coming out of Africa that is reported is doom and gloom, and they say there are real success stories there.

PRES. CLINTON: Absolutely.

MR. BROKAW: And the American people need to hear about that.

PRES. CLINTON: The American–first of all, I wish we could have a cessation in the use of the word Africa for just 18 months while America learns that Africa is a continent that just in sub-Saharan Africa has 48 separate countries, and that it’s not just the geography, it’s the politics, the culture, the language, everything is different, and that yes, there’s been bad news in Darfur, yes, there’s been bad news out of Zimbabwe, but you have country after country after country with very high growth rates and remarkable progress. I mean, Rwanda, genocide in ‘94, 10 percent of the country dies in 90 days. Four years later, their per capita income still well under $300 a year, 10 years later, $1,000 a year. Nearly quadrupled their per capita income. That’s the real Africa. That is far more representative of what the African people are doing and can do tomorrow than the other, and I really wish every time we talked about it–you should discuss it with your news people–whether we would mention a country. You might say, “Oh, by the way, it’s in Africa,” but we’ve got to stop thinking of Africa as a monolith.

MR. BROKAW: Mr. President, thank you very much.

-Chris Scott

Full Service Project Video Up!

Video of our service project at the RNCC on Tuesday is now up in its full form! (Short highlight clips were posted here earlier.)

Check out the full remarks from ONE CEO David Lane, Zambian AIDS activist Princess Zulu, Senator Bill Frist, M.D., Cindy McCain and First Lady Laura Bush.

Some posts from our service project at the DNCC here and here

Frist and Gerson Today

I grabbed some video with a tiny handheld camera at this morning’s ONE panels at the RNCC. Better quality footage will show up later, but I want to share some highlights with you now.

The first clip below is of Senator Frist introducing the panel and speakers. The second clip is of Michael Gerson talking about his experience crafting PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief).

I didn’t have a tripod of any kind sadly, so if shaky camera movements remind you too much of the Blair Witch Project- you can hold off a couple days until we have the full footage available.

1,500 Kits in Record Time

Tons of people came and we finished all the kits in record time. We had 3 hours to assemble 1,500 kits - but it was all done in just one hour.

During that time, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle came by to help out, as did the band DAUGHTRY. We should have video of all that by tomorrow.

‘Til then, I’ll just have to apologize sheepishly for this very amateur camera-work. It does give you a sense of the atmosphere in the room.

Kit Assembly!

We’re at the service project. It kicked off with short speeches by ONE President and CEO David Lane and an incredible Zambian AIDS activist Princess Zulu.

Right now, volunteers are running off to prepare kits for AIDS caregivers around the world.

The kits include simple items like wash cloths, cotton balls, soap, petroleum jelly. The kinds of things we take for granted everyday in America. And the kinds of things that can literally save lives around the world. Each bag of cotton balls, for example, will be washed and re-used for months.

I’m attaching photos below. They include photos of the supplies, assembly lines and packing up. Note the ones of people writing notes, every kit includes a handwritten note from the volunteer who assembled it - to the caregiver who will receive it.

I’m taking a bunch of video now too, but have to wait until I have silghtly better Internet to upload them.

6.1 Million Pennies

I arrived at the location of our service project a few moments ago and immediately saw a giant display of pennies - formed in the shape of an AIDS ribbon. The pennies are a project by the non-profit Got Cents?

Todd, one of the group’s founders, told me that they started collecting the pennies after they heard a speech by the president of World Vision. Four years later they now have 6.1 million - the same as the number of people who have died of AIDS since the last presidential election.

To give a sense of the # of pennies 6.1 mllion is, Todd told me that if you stacked them on on top of each other, they’d stretch 6 miles.

He also told me that they usually use local banks to help supply the pennies when they go on location (out of the organization’s bank account) but that there aren’t 6.1 million pennies in the whole St. Paul/Minneapolis area - so they’ll have to drive these pennies to Minnesota for when they do this service project all over again at the RNCC next week

Hope lies in today’s youth

Yesterday’s International Herald Tribune covered this month’s 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City and outlined many of the most difficult challenges we face in our work. At the conference Bill Clinton concluded that “with no magic bullet in sight… the need now is to combine efforts to advance prevention and treatment.” The article also goes on to note that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has developed a new test that can pinpoint new infections and control them more quickly in developed countries. However, this test still needs to be “refined for use in poor countries” and many participants were unhappy with an eight-month delay in reporting the test’s success.

Reading through the article, one part stood out to me. Even in the face of an often overwhelming crisis, there remains a tremendous glimmer of hope: young people.

There were calls for innovation and recruiting more young investigators to the AIDS field. As Alan Bernstein, executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise in Manhattan, put it, “The engines of discovery are new people.” Bernstein noted that recruiting new workers should be less of a problem than in the past because of an explosion of interest on university campuses about global health.

You can read the full article here.

Food To Fight AIDS

An opinion piece in the Guardian Weekly argues that it’s time Western donors regard food and nutrition as equally important elements to fighting AIDS and other illnesses as the drugs themselves.  

Some excerpts below, the full piece is here.

I wish that all the Aids experts and politicians who gathered in Mexico City last week could have been with me two years ago when I met a young man in a nameless, dusty village in Malawi. It was easily the most memorable encounter of my life – royalty, heads of state, and celebrities included. The man was in his mid-30s and badly emaciated. His eyes were pink at the edges and I remember thinking they were somehow on fire with rage.

But there was really no anger in him – just exhaustion, anguish, confusion. After gently pushing ahead of the others in the crowd, he asked: “Why are you keeping me alive? Why give me these Aids medicines? I am too hungry and weak to work and care for my family. Why torture me this way?”

Tens of billions of dollars have been pledged to combat the disease, yet donor countries have largely overlooked the role of nutrition, somehow managing to ignore both the scientists and the beneficiaries. The donors have been asked for help often enough and there are UN and NGO projects out there to fund, but they are not getting the cash they need to provide good, nutritious food to increasingly desperate people like the man I met in Malawi.

As food prices soar worldwide, poor families are already substituting less nutritious foods for higher-priced meat, fish, eggs and vegetables. For people who are already sick this can have drastic health consequences. The poorest families are being forced to choose between food and medicine for loved ones.

If we do not do a better job of helping poor HIV-affected families today, what chance will the next generation have for health and prosperity? It is time to change the way we help. Drugs alone are not a solution for Aids or TB. What doctor would admit patients to a hospital, give them the most advanced medications – and then leave them to starve

Bono On The Passage of PEPFAR

Yesterday afternoon, President Bush signed into law new PEPFAR legislation, finalizing months of work by ONE members, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders, advocacy organizations, foreign policy experts and medical professionals who worked together to pass historic new funding levels to fight AIDS, TB and malaria.

ONE Campaign Co-founder Bono issued this response:

“Americans, whether they know it or not, are literally saving the lives of millions of people in the poorest places on the planet. In the last five years, America has prevented 1 million women from passing on HIV to their babies…funded care for 3 millions AIDS orphans…and provided desperately needed medicine to more than 1.4 million people suffering from HIV/AIDS. You are my heroes and not just for what you’ve done, but for what this new law promises.

This has more to do with hard heads than soft hearts. America’s global AIDS plan has proved to be a smart investment, paying dividends in live saved, communities stabilized and America’s reputation in the world growing a little bit brighter. This stuff works and leaders from left and right — leaders like Senators Biden and Lugar, Representatives Berman and Ros-Lehtinen, President Bush, Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid - put aside their differences and agreed to do more.”

Live Blogging From PEPFAR-Signing at White House

ONE’s Legislative Deputy Director Maryamu Aminu is sending in live updates from the PEPFAR signing at the White House.

3pm:

-Very exciting atmosphere in the east gold room. They usually have state dinners in here.

-The procession just arrived and are standing on stage. Primary cosponsors: Biden, Berman, Kerry, Payne, Sununu, Brownback, Lugar, Lee, Pence, Dybul, and Enzi.

-People in the room:

Africa diplomatic corps and 15 focus-country ambassadors
Mrs Lantos, for whose husband the bill is named
Malaria coordinator- Anthony Zeimer
The African Children’s Choir
Peter Piot, head of UNAIDS

-President and the First Lady just arrived - to applause. (more…)