New York, N.Y. - World AIDS Day has always been a personal and emotional day for me. Hillary and I have lost several friends and loved ones to AIDS over the years. After I was elected President, we made unprecedented investments in prevention and treatment, especially targeted at regions and populations where infection rates were the highest, including African Americans and Latinos. We established a White House AIDS Office and convened the first White House Conference on HIV and AIDS. We made research and awareness a priority. And by the time I left the White House, stigma was fading, more people were getting tested, antiretrovirals were in mass production, and nearly everyone in America had access to lifesaving medicines.
So when I started my Foundation, I focused our efforts to fight AIDS globally, where only 300,000 people were on treatment worldwide. I knew we could make the biggest impact by reducing the prices of lifesaving antiretroviral medicines that were cost-prohibitive for much of the developing world. We brought prices down and now more than 70 countries are able to access drugs at our prices, benefiting more than 2 million people – half of the 4 million people now on treatment worldwide, including two-thirds of the children on pediatric medicines, thanks to our partnership with UNITAID. We’ve partnered with countries to build national health systems and address other health challenges – such as prevention of mother-to-child transmission and malaria – that continue to make AIDS one of the greatest killers of our time.
But despite our progress, in recent years, the Centers for Disease Control has estimated that the crisis in the United States is worse than we previously thought. And the UN reports this year the infection rate worldwide is more than double the rate of those on treatment.
Today, I am hosting a panel discussion a t Columbia University. In keeping with the theme of World AIDS Day 2009 “Universal Access and Human Rights,” we'll discuss what access means today – education and awareness, prevention and testing, and medicines and health care – and what businesses, governments, and civil society can do to help.
In 2010, no one, no matter where they live or how much money they have, should lose a loved one to this terrible, but preventable and treatable disease.
