Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia - Thursday December 13, 2001
Jeremy Lovell
"Unless we deal aggressively with AIDS now it will make us all poorer and less secure," he told a packed auditorium as he gave the second Diana, Princess of Wales Lecture on AIDS.
Clinton, who stepped down in January after two highly successful albeit controversial terms as president, said 40 million people were infected with HIV or AIDS -- a figure predicted to jump to 100 million within five years.
The world could no longer treat AIDS as an issue primarily for sub-Saharan Africa.
"Haven't enough Africans and Americans died to teach the rest of us?" he asked.
"Do we really have to sit here and wait for a few million Russians, a few million Chinese, a few million Indians to die?," he said. "It is up to us to mobilize."
He praised Princess Diana for having spent a decade highlighting the AIDS pandemic. She was patron of the British National AIDS Trust from 1991 until she was killed in a Paris car crash in August 1997.
RICH COUNTRIES MUST PAY
Clinton, an enthusiastic new entrant to the celebrity talk circuit but who received no fee for his speech, likened the spread of AIDS to a Shakespearean tragedy.
"All of life's greatest wounds are self-inflicted. They don't need to happen," he said.
"The world has tried ignoring this for long enough. We actually know this whole deal can be turned around. The question is whether we have the wisdom and the will," he added.
Clinton was watched among others by his daughter Chelsea -- a student at Oxford University -- and British Prime Tony Blair's wife Cherie.
He said a decision by pharmaceutical firms in South Africa to agree to slash the prices of their products after initially fighting against the move had opened the doors to cheaper and sometimes free AIDS drugs.
But in return, the rich host nations to the drug firms had to delve into their pockets to help fund research.
"It will cost money to do this, but if we don't spend it now we will spend much, much more later on," Clinton said.
"AIDS is a great test case for the age of interdependence. If we really want a future for our children we will have to make the world without walls a home for all its children," he said.
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