*EPF106 02/23/2004
Text: Powell, Thompson Announce Release of Emergency AIDS Funds
($350 million on its way to 14 AIDS-stricken nations) (2000)

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Health Tommy G. Thompson announced February 23 the release of first-year funding for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. They said the $350 million is ready for distribution to 14 nations in Africa and the Caribbean, which account for 50 percent of all the world's 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS.

At the same Washington briefing, Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias outlined the strategy which will guide distribution of the funds in order to send relief to suffering peoples as quickly as possible. He said the funds will be used for prevention, care and treatment programs.

"These funds will directly affect the lives of millions of people," said Thompson.

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief was first outlined in the State of the Union message in January 2003. Congress has approved a $15 billion, 5-year campaign that aspires to provide treatment to 2 million HIV-infected people, prevent 7 million new HIV infections, and provide care to 10 million people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, including children's whose families have been stricken by the disease.

Following is the transcript of remarks by Powell, Thompson and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Andrew Natsios:

(begin text)

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
February 23, 2004

REMARKS

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson
And U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Andrew Natsios
On The Five-Year Strategy for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

February 23, 2004
Washington, D.C.

(12:15 p.m. EST)

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very pleased to be joined today by Secretary of Health and Human Resources Tommy Thompson, my cabinet colleague, and I'm also joined by Andrew Natsios, the Administrator of USAID, and, of course, Randy Tobias, who is our Coordinator for our Global HIV/AIDS programs.

Eight thousand people will die today because of AIDS. It is a pandemic. When this Administration took office, the President committed to the American people and to the people of the world that we would do everything we could about it. He charged Secretary Thompson and me to work hard on it.

We formed a cabinet-level task force and we have done a great deal over the last several years. We helped Secretary General Annan when he set up the Health Fund, the Global Health Fund; and not too long ago, a year or so ago, the President made a very powerful statement to the world when he said that the United States would contribute $15 billion over a five-year period to deal with this pandemic.

Much more has to be done, and I think the United States is showing bold leadership for the rest of the world on what we have to do.

Today we have asked you to come together because we have finished the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which is going up to Capitol Hill today. The Congress has approved the President's program and appropriated some money for that program, and we'll also be describing how the first $350 billion will be -- excuse me, 350 -- I wish it was -- $350 million will be used to get the program underway.

This is something we are all committed to, we are all solidly behind, and I'm going to ask Secretary Thompson to say a word or two; and then Administrator Natsios; and then turn it over to Ambassador Randy Tobias, our Global AIDS Coordinator, to give you the details of both the plan that's going up to the Hill and how the $350 million is going to be used against what kinds of programs around the world and how it will support our overall effort; and then Ambassador Tobias will be prepared to take questions.

Let me, before turning it over to Tommy Thompson, though, thank Ambassador Tobias and his staff for the great work that they have done in pulling this plan together. And now let me turn it over to Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson.

SECRETARY THOMPSON: Thank you, Colin.

Thank you very much, Secretary Powell for your passion on this subject, and thank you for your introduction.

An old, Irish philosopher said that all deals are off until the money hits the table. Well, today, the money hits the table.

The $350 million that we are releasing this morning is going to save the lives; it's going to relieve suffering in our 14 focus countries. I'd like to thank Secretary Powell for his leadership on this subject. I certainly want to thank my friend Ambassador Randall Tobias for his passion, his leadership and his willingness to serve, as well as his staff for their efforts to get this money turned around so quickly.

It's one thing to say we're going to do something. It's another thing to send the check. These funds will directly affect the lives of millions of people. I also want to thank him for his confidence in the Department of Health and Human Services, because we'll receive $109 million of the dollars, plus an additional $80 billion that we are contributing from our Department.

This Administration has made an unprecedented commitment to fight global AIDS. It's a commitment that is growing. No government has ever invested the time, the energy and the resources to fighting AIDS as the United States has under President George W. Bush.

An important part of that investment is going to go to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. I am proud to serve as Chairman of the Global Fund, and I am proud of the contributions the United States is making to that fund.

America has spent, requested or vowed to seek nearly $2 billion to the Global Fund. That's more than a third of the $5.3 billion pledged to the fund by all governments, organizations and individuals. We have recognized our serious responsibility as a nation.

And we're meeting that responsibility. To date, the fund has approved 224 grant programs in 121 countries, totaling more than $2 billion. Our continued commitment to the Global Fund will equipment public-private partnerships, mobilize resources to fight the spread of diseases around the world.

So let's not lose sight of the bigger picture. The United States will provide unprecedented resources, but the crisis of global AIDS is so far and so vast, it's too great for any one country to solve.

President Bush and all of us here today continue to call on more countries to get involved with the global effort by contributing more resources to the Global Fund. This is a commitment that the whole world must keep.

I have traveled to Africa twice in the past two years. The first time, I saw the damage with my own eyes. I saw the despair. In November, I returned as chairman of the Global Fund. Again, I saw the devastation, but this time, with Ambassador Tobias, we saw a great deal of optimism and hope.

The treatment and prevention programs that we're supporting under both the bilateral and the Global Fund are starting to work and are starting to show results. The money that we're releasing today holds the same promise, the same hope, the same optimism for the future.

Thank you very much.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you, Tommy.

Administrator Natsios.

ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. AID is part of the team that Ambassador Tobias has assembled to fight this terrible pandemic. We've been working in a very integrated way, not only in Washington, but, of course, in the field where our AID field missions have a large presence. We have several hundred people working on this in the targeted countries.

But there are two specific things I'd like to focus on this morning, and that is that we're integrating the programs that Ambassador Tobias are in charge of with our existing AID portfolio that is not part of the $2.4 billion appropriation.

In other words, for example, we're taking our food aid programs in a number of the countries where there are rising rates of acute malnutrition, as a result of most of the able-bodied adults having either died or being very sick, so sick they cannot plant the crops and they can't harvest them; so we're seeing very high rates of malnutrition when there is no -- supposed to be any famine, there's no drought, there's no war going on. It is a function of the able-bodied adults not being able to farm.

And so we're integrating our food aid programs to reduce the malnutrition rates because we know there's a relationship between the onset of the disease and malnutrition.

The second thing is that we are using, at Ambassador Tobias's insistence, the existing infrastructure and networks that we have all over the developing world to move this money as fast as possible. If you set up new networks, it takes much longer to do that.

So we're using the existing religious institutions at the local level, the NGO communities, the missionary hospitals, the ministries of health and other mechanisms that already are in place in order to move this money as rapidly as possible.

But one example, last Friday, we provided four grants to faith-based NGOs, including Catholic Relief Services, World Relief, Habitat for Humanitarian Opportunities International, which have a excellent record of connections into the existing infrastructure within Africa, in particular.

In October, I was in Addis meeting with Prime Minister Meles about the near-famine conditions that existed last year, which we've overcome; but I took the opportunity to meet the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church -- 40 percent of Ethiopians are Orthodox. It's an ancient church. It goes back to the third century, but they have 200,000 priests at the local level.

We've been training them, using grant money, in understanding what the pandemic is about and providing literature through those churches to how the disease can be prevented from spreading.

I also met with the Imam, who's the head of all Muslims in Ethiopia -- 40 percent of Ethiopia is also Muslim. And we're doing the same thing for 125,000 imams -- I'm sorry -- mullahs at the mosques in the villages.

With literature and training, we can use these existing infrastructures to change people's behavior so that the disease does not spread as rapidly. And so using these mechanisms, we will advance the objectives of President Bush and make this whole effort move more rapidly.

It is a great pleasure to be working with Randy Tobias, who is a man of great conviction and managerial competence and leadership ability; and our people are really pleased he's doing this, and we're working in a very integrated fashion with his staff.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you very much, Andrew. Tommy and Andrew, thank you for being here this morning. I'm going to turn it over to Ambassador Tobias now, but I hope you've seen from what we've said so far that this is an integrated effort. We're all working together, pulling the bilateral programs that had existed previously, the Global Health Fund programs that Secretary Thompson spoke about, with what Ambassador Tobias will now be doing with the new funds so that it is all integrated, and not just on HIV/AIDS, but as Andrew pointed out, integrated into feeding programs and other programs, all related to bringing help to those people greatest in need.

And now, it is my great pleasure to turn these proceedings over to Ambassador Randall Tobias and to thank him and his staff for the great work they have done in pulling this all together; and once again, thank Secretary Thompson and Andrew Natsios for all their great work in helping Ambassador Tobias.

Thank you very much.

Randy.

(Applause.)

(end text)

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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