19 July
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Regardless of your feelings about the former first family, it is impossible to deny the presence of the Clintons on the Political stage. Whether you believe that former President Clinton’s “indiscretions” negate his leadership status, or if you believe that he has done great things for marginalized people, you cannot merely ignore his presence. Beyond Hilary’s current office, former President Bill Clinton has been serving as an activist and philanthropist since the end of his presidential term. For this, he received a standing ovation as he stepped out from behind the curtain onto stage at AIDS 2010. No matter what any one of us thought of him before, for the moment, he was in a sense our hero. His voice has been added to the many who fight for people living with HIV, in a rather large way. His foundation the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) has worked on the problem of AIDS since 2002, and he has been an advocate for national and international funding of the Global Fund.
In his keynote address, Clinton addressed the benefits of all of our efforts in service, funding, research, advocacy, and education. He began by explaining that IAS (International AIDS Society) conferences are very much different than other activist conferences and meetings. In other meetings, talk is filled with empty promises and meaningless talk. At IAS meetings, he claimed, talk truly turns to action. Once the global society of individuals concerned with AIDS gets together to discuss the “state of the epidemic” this community produces breakthroughs.
After this praise, Clinton went on to explain that even though the global economy has tanked in the past year, AIDS giving is still going. Though the G8 governments are not fulfilling their promises to the Global Fund of billions of US dollars, privatized giving has been on the rise. He outlined several simple strategies for fundraising, stating that the real solution is in finding millions of people to give small donations to add up to millions of dollars.
The main point of Clinton’s speech was that the global leadership is living in a false dichotomy when it comes to HIV/AIDS. He cited a belief that a choice must be made between funding treatment and funding the general health services for mothers and children. This is simply not the case, as these topics are not mutually exclusive. He said, “There IS a real choice to be made, but its not the one we have been told about. If you want to increase healthcare systems and increase treatment, we need more people in the healthcare workforce.” He continued, that in low-income countries we need to begin to learn how care can be provided at lower costs through in-home care and non-clinical healthcare workers. People living with AIDS need proper medical care, but proper medical care can come from lay people trained to provide for simple medical services and to oversee treatment programs.
The false dichotomy of the global leadership also blinds these leaders from seeing that “more of the same is not enough.” We need to change the programming and treatment initiatives. We cannot stand by and do the same things that are only partially working.
In closing, Clinton conjured memories of the recent physics break-through in breaking down sub-atomic molecules in a manner previously unheard of. He said that this discovery led to knowledge that there are actually more positive than negative molecules in the sub-atomic structure. In terms of HIV/AIDS advocacy, prevention, treatment, and future cure, “That’s the only chance we got, that within us all, the positive is just a little bigger than the negative.
