Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Wall Street Journal - August 15, 2006
Marilyn Chase, marilyn.chase@wsj.com
Though the two men have long taken different approaches to fighting AIDS, recently they have begun coordinating their efforts and last month took a joint trip to South Africa. Partly as a result of visits to AIDS facilities there, they said yesterday at the XVI International AIDS Conference, was a shared recognition that with drug-discounting programs under way, boosting investment in the people and facilities to deliver drugs is "the No. 1 thing to be done," said former President Clinton.
In a separate development here, AIDS activists warned against complacency on drug pricing. Doctors Without Borders blasted public-health officials for having "their heads in the sand" over costly and unavailable second-generation AIDS drugs needed abroad as resistance rises among the poor now treated with cheap generics.
Still, Messrs. Gates and Clinton argued that the first step is to strengthen health systems without which it is impossible even to distribute drugs.
"The capacity to treat isn't so much gated by drug prices now as by personnel," said Mr. Gates, the founder of Microsoft Corp. Efforts to license and manufacture generic versions of AIDS drugs for poor countries -- led by former President Clinton, among others -- have brought the annual cost of treatment to as little as $130 a year, Mr. Gates said. But even free drug programs go begging without massive investment to bolster care-delivery systems, he said.
Mr. Gates offered as an example one of his own foundation's efforts, a program that aimed to give away AIDS drugs in Botswana and that suffered delays because of absent infrastructure.
"It was slow to start. I was very impatient," he said. "It was related to personnel and training."
In another show of unity, Mr. Gates and Mr. Clinton strove to pay respects to Pepfar, the $15 billion President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, unpopular and oft-heckled here for its stress on abstinence over condom use. Pepfar should be sustained, along with full funding of the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, Mr. Gates said.
Mr. Gates, offered one upbeat note, saying a prevention pill with newly reported safety -- along with a microbicide gel for women -- "could be the next big breakthrough" ahead of a vaccine.
As Messrs. Clinton and Gates held court on one stage, members of the African-American elite gathered on another stage in a carefully orchestrated show of unity against what was long deemed a gay, white disease.
"I never thought AIDS would be an issue for me at my age," said a silver-haired Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. But leaders united by the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, endorsed the tardy call to action because AIDS is now the top killer of African-American women aged 24 to 34 years old, and is infecting previously healthy black men in U.S. prisons.
Meanwhile, actor Richard Gere, co-chair of the Heroes Project, a nongovernmental initiative to reduce AIDS stigma through the mass media, signed an extension of an accord with Star TV in India.
Under the deal, Star will boost its commitment by about $9 million to about $23 million worth of airtime through 2009 devoted to AIDS content in public service announcements, dramatic serials and quiz shows.
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