The Associated Press; Monday, December 1, 1997; 8:46 p.m. EST
Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press Writer

In a videotaped message to participants in a ceremony organized by the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Clinton said the battle against AIDS has shown some signs of success, with powerful new treatments helping people with AIDS live longer and healthier lives.

This spring, the federal Centers for Disease Control announced that the number of deaths caused by the disease had declined for the first time since AIDS began spreading in the United States in 1981.

"Still, HIV is affecting more and more young people," Clinton said. "So this year let me send a special message to young Americans: Only you have the power to keep yourselves safe."

In brief remarks to Democratic donors Monday night, the president outlined his record on AIDS and declared, "I still believe that we will be able to find a cure within the next few years if we continue to intensify our efforts."

At the Pediatric AIDS Foundation ceremony, held in Washington's National Theater, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed concern that pharmaceutical companies producing the new drugs for adults were lagging behind in bringing out dosages to be used by children infected with the virus.

"Of the 11 drugs currently approved for treatment of HIV and AIDS, only six are approved and formulated for children," she told the gathering.

She cautioned that while the overall number of AIDS cases is falling in the United States, there had been no comparable drop elsewhere in the world.

"We should be concerned that by the year 2010, it is estimated that as many as 40 million children will have lost their parents worldwide to AIDS," she said.

That theme was echoed at a conference Monday on the impact of AIDS on developing nations organized in Washington by the United Nations, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank, and several other groups.

USAID administrator Brian Atwood said the number of deaths resulting from AIDS in Central Africa was so great that it was causing life expectancy in that region to plummet to "medieval levels."

"Life expectancy, which has been steadily on the rise for about three decades will drop to 40 years or less in nine sub-Saharan countries by the year 2010 mainly because of this disease," he said.

Carol Bellamy, executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund, said that Monday's 10th annual observance of World AIDS Day should focus on ways to protect the world's children from the accelerating spread of the virus.

"We now know that the human immuno-deficiency virus, which was virtually unknown to medical science until relatively recently, will be a major killer of children within little more than a decade, and that the majority of deaths will be in those countries that are least able to absorb the loss of so many young people," she said.

At a Justice Department ceremony, 6-year-old Precious Thomas, who became infected with HIV by her birth mother, read a poem and a brief statement to standing ovations. "AIDS can affect everyone but so can ignorance," she said. "Get educated before you hurt someone who is infected."

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