USIA Washington File - 23 March 1999
Charles W. Corey - USIA Staff Writer
Sandy Thurman, President Clinton's director of the National Office on AIDS Policy, made that observation in a March 23 interview with the United States Information Agency. Thurman spoke to USIA as she prepared to lead a March 27-April 5 fact-finding mission to assess the impact the disease has had on children in Zambia, Uganda and South Africa.
Thurman said the trip is in fact a "presidential fact-finding mission" because on World AIDS Day last year, Clinton dedicated $10 million to look at the issue of children orphaned or at risk by HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Among her party will be U.S. Representatives Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick [Democrat-Michigan]; Barbara Lee [Democrat California]; Sheila Jackson-Lee [Democrat-Texas] and; Eddie Bernice Johnson [Democrat-Texas]
Asked why the delegation will visit the aforementioned nations, she said that those countries were picked for "very specific reasons."
Zambia, she explained, "does not have the long history of leadership in the fight against HIV/AIDS that Uganda does.
"We wanted to take members of Congress and other leaders to see where the challenges are greatest," she added, "and that is in a country [like Zambia] that is not wealthy and does not have a large infrastructure."
Uganda, on the other hand, is a nation that stands as "the model program not only for Africa, but the world -- in helping to stem the tide of this epidemic," she said.
Thurman praised the Ugandan government for its "extraordinary leadership" in implementing "wonderful and aggressive prevention campaigns," against the killer disease, and as such, "we want to give people the opportunity to see what works."
Finally, Thurman said, the delegation will travel to South Africa, to see "a country that is really just beginning to grapple" with the disease and see if we can't find ways to help them to cope with it.
Thurman acknowledged that the United States has a "long history of involvement" in fighting the disease. It will invest $76 million on HIV-AIDS prevention efforts in sub-Saharan Africa this year, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Thurman said her delegation will be "looking at programs that are run at the community level, primarily -- some that are run by the U.S., some that are not" to identify what of them that "we might be able to support and what we might be able to duplicate" elsewhere.
Thurman noted that by the turn of this century, the United States itself will have some 125,000 American children that are expected to be orphaned by AIDS, "so it is a challenge that we share and" as such, "we are looking for best practices."
Commenting on the impact HIV/AIDS has had on Africa's economic growth and development, Thurman said "What we are beginning to see, and what I think people are beginning to understand, is that HIV/AIDS is not a health issue. It is a development issue. It is (also) a finance...trade... and security issue.
"When you look at many countries now having almost one in four people infected -- the majority of which are of working age (20-40) -- it begins to have a significant impact on economic growth across the board," she explained.
For instance, Thurman said life expectancy in South Africa in the next few years is expected to decline from 60 years to 40 years as a result of HIV/AIDS -- "and that is true throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
"So what we are seeing as a result of this epidemic is that we are losing almost all of the gains that we have made in life expectancy," she said. "We are losing much of the ground that we gained in infant child mortality and morbidity; so this is... about the health of nations, not just the health of people."
Asked to compare HIV/AIDS rates in sub-Saharan Africa to other regions of the world, Thurman said, "Africa and the United States began early on to grapple with this epidemic.
"India," a country from which Thurman recently visited, "is just now really feeling the impact of the AIDS epidemic, as are some of the states of the former Soviet Union. So India is now where the epidemic is exploding fastest.
"I think as we look towards the future," she continued, "India and other parts of Asia as well will be suffering from this epidemic. Just like Africa is today if we don't identify ways to stop it and share the experience" and knowledge accrued "with our partners all around the world."
Concluding, Thurman reiterated that AIDS is not just about health per se. "This is a development issue, this is a trade issue, this is an economic issue and in order for us to do anything about this, we have got to" devise a joint strategy involving "all sectors of government and society, including the private and public sector."
Upon return, Thurman noted, her delegation will be forwarding a report to President Clinton for follow-up action.
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