Global Aids Funding

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
SENATE
Nov. 20, 2004

GLOBAL AIDS FUNDING

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last Saturday, just 7 days ago, I was in Cape Town, South Africa, for a conference sponsored by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. With me were my colleagues, Senator SUSAN COLLINS, Congresswoman BARBARA LEE from the State of California, and we had an opportunity to visit an AIDS clinic, a clinic that is funded by the Global Fund. It is an area known as West Cape, and it is an extremely poor area. Many people are infected.

South Africa may be the most devastated country on that continent when it comes to the disease of AIDS. To think that 25 percent of the men and women in the South African military are infected with AIDS, to think that most of the major employers in companies find that at least one-fourth of their workforce is infected, is an indication of the reach of this terrible disease.

We went to this clinic because something historic was happening there. Because of the Global Fund and because of contributions from countries such as the United States, for the first time we are providing AIDS pills, ARV therapies to people who are infected. What that means is that for some of the poorest people on Earth, they will receive a few pills which, if they take them dutifully each day, they can live. And if they do not receive the pills, or don't take them, they will surely die. Think about that moment when they first heard of the possibility that they might be on the list to be saved with these drugs.

So we went to this clinic where they are measuring the rate of the infection of these poor people, and if they are far enough along with their infection, where their life is threatened, they qualify. They waited on benches in a crowded room silently for hours, literally for hours for a chance to be examined in the hopes that they would receive these pills.

Outside this clinic was a little dirt playground, just the most basic thing, filled with children. The kids were playing with everything they could find, stones and sticks and old rubber tires, just trying to while away the time together while they waited for their parents who were listening and waiting to be counseled to find out if they would be allowed to live or die. The children had no idea what was going on. They are just little kids. Some of them may be HIV-positive, too. But we walked by this playground, and the kids looked up at this delegation in their suits and ties walking through, and they looked at us and they waved, and we waved back, and I thought: I am going to go over and say hi to the kids.

I no sooner took two steps toward these children when they left the playground, 30 or 40 of them, and gathered around me hugging me. And then, as they were hugging me, these little toddlers, these kids, spontaneously started singing the African national anthem. You could not script that. It sounds like a scene from a movie. It is real life. It happened a week ago. And in this clinic in West Cape, a miracle is occurring. The United States, because of its caring and compassion, has reached out through the Global Fund to give these children the chance that they will grow up with a parent. And for many children in Africa there is no chance-12 million AIDS orphans on that continent, more infections on the continent of Africa than any other place on Earth.

We know how bad it is. We know it is getting worse. Take any minute that I speak in the Chamber, and in that 1-minute period of time, across the world 6 people will die from AIDS, and 10 more will become infected. So no matter what we are doing, as good as it is, we are approaching this with steady steps going after this disease and epidemic while it races away from us infecting more people than we can possibly save with the resources we are putting into it. Stephen Lewis is a special envoy for the United Nations for HIV/AIDS in Africa, and he said, "Never in human history have so many died for so little reason." Then he went on to say, speaking to me and to all of us, "You have a chance to alter the course of that history. Can there be any task more noble?" This is the moral challenge of our generation.

Mr. President, 60 years from now, 100 years from now, people will look back and judge us by what we have done with the global AIDS epidemic. Questions have been asked for almost six decades about what the world did in response to the Holocaust. We will be asked by future generations: What did you do about this epidemic reaching Holocaust proportions and beyond? In 2002, the countries that came together to form the Global Fund said we are going to fight AIDS and malaria and tuberculosis, and all the countries committed some $3 billion to almost 300 programs to go after those diseases in nearly 130 different countries. Since the beginning, the United States has been involved and we have said for every dollar that we contribute, we want $2 from the rest of the world.

In some years we have fallen short. In some years the rest of the world has fallen short. But we need to continue to make a contribution.

Now, what troubles me is this: Last year, as a nation, we contributed $547 million to the Global Fund. This year we will contribute less. The disease is not under control. The disease is growing faster than our contributions toward ending it. This year if we are lucky we will contribute $438 million-far short of last year's contribution. And the Global Fund tells us that they need $551 million from the United States. They will find matching funds 2 to 1 from around the world, and they have plenty of projects just like the one I described to you.

In that West Cape clinic right now 550 victims of HIV/AIDS are receiving the therapy that keeps them alive every day-550.

The universe of those who are eligible is 4,000, to give you an idea. As we contribute to the Global Fund, we are scratching the surface of what this disease is doing to the world around us. As we reduce our contributions to this Global Fund, it limits our ability to save people.

I have spoken, of course, about HIV/AIDS. The challenge of malaria is just as alarming. The Global Fund has been financing the treatment of over 30 million people for over 5 years, a huge increase from the 10,000 people currently treated with new drugs. They need money to do it. People die from malaria as they do from so many other things.

In addition, we have to understand that the fight against tuberculosis is one we can win but one we must assume our responsibility for.

We need to make certain when the supplemental appropriations bills come before Congress, as they are likely to in the next several months, that we revisit our contribution to the Global Fund, not just for those kids in Africa but for ourselves. That life lost in Africa may seem so distant and removed from our own lives but in some ways we are connected. We are all God's children. We all believe this Creator put us on Earth for a purpose, and that purpose is to care for the less fortunate of our brethren.

At the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok last July, Nelson Mandela, who is probably one of the greatest living people, declared:

History will surely judge us harshly if we do not respond with all the energy and resources that we can bring to bear in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Nelson Mandela is right. History will stand in judgment of the bill we pass today, the supplemental bill that will come, and the resolve of this Congress and this administration to make sure that we continue to lead the world in this historic humanitarian effort.

I yield the floor.