Discusses his plans to fight against AIDS in India
through the William J. Clinton Foundation
Interview aired on: Sunday, February 19, 2006 at 17:30hrs (IST)
Former US President, Bill Clinton announced another initiative in
New Delhi in his ongoing fight against AIDS. The latest plan is
to train more Indian nurses to deal with 5 million HIV positive
patients in India. President Clinton has over the years managed
to convince pharmaceutical companies to bring down the prices of
AIDS fighting drugs. To find out more about his plans, CNN’s
senior International correspondent Satinder Bindra met up with him
and started by asking him what the world should be most concerned
about in the battle against AIDS.
Given below is the full transcript of the interview:
Bill Clinton: Clinton
Satinder Bindra: Bindra
Clinton: The thing that I am most worried about is that there were
approximately 5 million new infections last year, and that primarily
is because 90 per cent of the people who are infected, don’t
know it. That is, when you and others including me, say that there
are 43 million people in the world who are HIV positive - truth
is we are guessing. So I think that’s the next big frontier
here besides finding a vaccine and ultimately a cure.
Bindra: With your foundation, these tests to find out if someone
is HIV positive are cheaper, you have also brought down the price
of AIDS fighting drugs but does more still need to be done?
Clinton: We know for about fifty cents can give people the test
which will tell you in 20 mins if you are HIV positive. We have
brought down the medicine very low and we can test and see whether
it’s working and we are now working on the second line of drugs.
But, its all irrelevant unless we have people in the rural areas,
for example, who are trained to do this, so we are doing more and
more work to train personnel that’s what we are doing here
in India working with nurses in rural areas. Even in India, which
has the largest number of doctors anywhere including in rural areas,
there are still numerous areas without doctors, without enough nurses,
and paramedical people to do this work.
Bindra: When you first approached these companies Mr. President
asking them to reduce the prices of these drugs, how did they look
at you, what was their reaction…
Clinton: We knew that the reason these drugs were priced as they
were, as I was told, relatively speaking, a low volume, high profit
margin business where the buyers were often poor countries where
payment was often delayed and sometimes uncertain. So we said that
we want you to go to a high volume low profit margin business with
prompt and certain payment. We will work out the prompt and certain
payment and we’ll get the volumes up. That’s what got
the prices down. None of these people are losing money. None of
our partners lose money, but, they have a whole different business
philosophy now.
Bindra: If you and me were to meet Mr. President a year from now,
would 8,000 people still be dying of this disease every day?
Clinton: Probably! but I think that a year from now instead of a
million people getting the medication we should have 3 million or
more. A year from now, we should have far more people, like the
nurses we are talking about here. And that means that the more you
have education prevention and testing. I hope a year from now it
would have drastically increased by millions, tens of millions the
number of people getting tested. It will take a little while once
you do all three things. Then that 8,000 a day will go down. Don’t,
let anybody tell you that you can’t do it, I saw the death
rate in Brazil drop 80 per cent in two years. In my first term,
we dropped the death rate in America by 80 per cent.
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