I had the privilege of listening this morning to ex President Clinton deliver the second Diana Princess of Wales AIDS Lecture (Kofi Annan gave the first), for the National AIDS Trust (of which I am an ambassador).
He brilliantly set the case for why the world needs to act on HIV/AIDS - even if you don't accept the moral case for action, he argued, you should understand it as a threat to global security: " young people with AIDS who know they have one year to live could be easy recruits for any terrorist causes going." He kept coming back to the forecasts of 100million people living with AIDS by 2005; the dangers this would pose; and that it need not happen!
President Clinton contrasted the life opportunities of people in the industrialised world - predicting very soon that babies will leave hospital with their personal Gene Cards and consequent life expectancies of 90-95 years - versus people living with AIDS in the developing world.
He repeated the key statistics:
He kept emphasising that "it is not rocket science" - the world knows a lot about prevention strategies and caring strategies, even if the prizes of vaccines and cures may be a long way off. He rattled off an impressive range of examples of action - many of which he had personally seen. (He was moving when relating all of this to his personal experience generally - asking at one point - when did your first friend die of AIDS - in his case more than a decade ago, and the most recent, he added, two weeks ago).
He highlighted the dangers of ignorance and denial - experts in China reckon less than 4% of Chinese know how AIDS is transmitted; India (which will soon have the largest number of AIDS cases) is still "in denial." Within 2-3 years several million Russians will be infected.
He repeated the direct security threats to the West - eg second fastest growth rates in AIDS infections is in the Caribbean - and Hilary Clinton has a million Dominicans in her senate constituency. In many developing countries, teachers are dying of AIDS faster than new teachers are trained; ditto police, nurses etc - and what - he asked - are the implications for development and global security.
He strongly endorsed the action against Bin Laden etc - but also pointed out that two and a half times as many people die every day of AIDS as were killed on September 11th - "and in a world without walls, they are our neighbours too." The US share of Kofi Annan's suggested Global AIDS budget would be the equivalent of 2 months spending on the Afghan War ie $2billion. "AIDS" he said - "is the greatest test for the age of interdependence."
Listening to Bill Clinton, I am pleased that we have made a small contribution to showing HIV/AIDS as an integral part of the Responsible Business agenda in "Everybody's Business."
I strongly commend the full lecture - it was a tour de force - delivered by one of the world's greatest orators.