Prepared Comments by Sandra Thurman, Director, Office of National AIDS Policy, and Presidential Envoy for AIDS Cooperation. Ms. Thurmans speech was delivered at the International Plenary Session, US Conference on AIDS, October 2, 2000.

(Actual remarks may have differed)

I am delighted to be with you here today in my hometown. My thanks to NMAC and all of the conference sponsors for once again bringing us all together. For many of us who have been doing this work for a while, this conference is like a family reunion. As I look around this room, I am encouraged to see many friends and colleagueswarriors and heroes in the battle against AIDSwho have played a vitally important role in shaping our shared response to this crisis, here at home, in Africa, and around the world.

I appreciate your allowing me a few moments this afternoon to talk with you about the global AIDS pandemic. It is a testament to our growing spirit and energy that we can unite our efforts to address the AIDS epidemic here in the United States with the millions of people around the world who share in the struggle.

The sad truth is that our battle against AIDS is far from over. And this is as true in Kansas City as it is in Kwa Zulu Natal or in Katmandu. We must not give in to the temptations of fear, denial, and blame, or find false comfort in the well-intentioned words of our own past promises. And now more than ever, we must be vigilant against the growing misperception that AIDS is no longer a lethal threata deadly misperception that the public and policy makers are all too eager to embrace.

We have reached a decisive moment in a struggle that has already robbed us of far too many of our loved onesbrothers and sisters, sons and daughters, parents and partners. It is time to share our successes and failures with our colleagues from every corner of the globe in the hope that the knowledge and experience we have gained can help all of us to move forward together.

As we enter the new millennium, we are called upon to choose between concerted action and the tragic consequences of complacency. Together, we can and we must use our small successes and recent signs of hopenot as an invitation to rest, but as a foundation for boldly facing the futureand for fighting on.

As we know far too well, AIDS is a plague of Biblical proportion, and it claimed 10 times more lives in Africa last year than those lost in all armed conflicts waging across the continent combined. While many of us have witnessed its devastation firsthand, it is almost impossible to describe the grip that AIDS has on villages across Africa and on communities around the world.

14 million men, women, and children in Africa have already died of AIDS. Today and everyday, AIDS buries more than 6,000 Africansand that number will more than double in the next few years. AIDS is now the leading cause of death among all people of all ages in Africaas it is for young adult African American men here in the United States.

And the epidemic rages on. Each day, 16,000 people become HIV infectedone every 8 seconds. Half of the newly infected are young people under the age of 25, and more than half are women. By 2005, more than 100 million people worldwide will have been infected with HIV.

In a host of different ways and from a variety of different vantage points, it is increasingly children and families who are caught in the crossfire of this relentless epidemic.

In Africa, an entire generation is in jeopardy. Within the next decade, more than 40 million children will have lost one or both parents to AIDS. 40 million. That is almost the same number as all children in public school in the entire United Statesor all children living east of the Mississippi River. Left unchecked, this tragedy will continue to escalate for at least another 30 years.

In just a few short years, AIDS has wiped out decades of hard work and steady progress in developmentand will soon double infant mortality, triple child mortality, and slash life expectancy by 20 years or more.

In the same way, years of effort to improve the social and economic standing of women has been eroded by AIDS. With families struggling to care for large numbers of orphans, it is the girls who are often forced to stay out or drop out of school and help to care for those who are sick. Women are often left with no way to protect themselves from infectioneven when they know they are at risk.

And AIDS is also threatening the economic and political stability of entire nations, as President Clinton reiterated at the recent UN Millennium Summit in New York. We must move beyond thinking of AIDS just as a health issueAIDS is a human rights issue, a development issue, a trade and investment issue, and a security and stability issue.

Yet my message to you today is not one of hopelessness and desolation. On the contrary, I hope to share with you a sense of optimism. For amidst all of this tragedy, there is hope.

While it is true that the lives of millions perhaps hundreds of millionsof individuals and families hang in the balance, we cannot allow ourselves to be daunted by the gravity of the challenge that lies before us.

The pages of history are graced with extraordinary examples of howin the face of seemingly insurmountable oddsindividuals, communities, and sometimes even governments have dared to turn the tide. In fact, that has been the history of the AIDS community.

Time and again, we have witnessed what can be accomplished by those who refuse to give up or give in. And we have all been blessed by the benefit of concerted and collective action that has pulled us from the brink of disaster and lifted us to higher ground.

Together, we must now reach for one of those moments again.

I am proud that the U.S. Governments funding commitment has now reached beyond our own borders. Last year, the Administration requested and the Congress approved a new Global AIDS Initiative that increased the US commitment by $100 million for fiscal year 2000. That more than doubled our investment in the fight against AIDS in Africa. And this year, the President has asked for an additional $100 million. I am very pleased that the prospects look good for securing our request and perhaps even building on it.

I believe that there is growing recognition in the Congress that this is not a Republican or a Democratic issue, but an escalating global disaster that requires all of us to actand to act now.

There is much more that we can and must do together. UNAIDS has said that it will take an investment of at least $3 billion a year to put an effective prevention and basic care program in place in Africa alone; last year, collective spending was only one tenth that amount.

As President Clinton said before the UN Security Council, together we must "close the gap." And he is absolutely right. We must close the gap between our rhetoric and our actionand between resource needs and our current investments.

And this is as true domestically as it is internationally. With more than 50% of new infections in this country occurring in communities of color, the epidemic in this country now mirrors the epidemic in the rest of the world. We must come together to nurture a vision of unity, compassion, and empowerment, a vision born and renewed in churches, mosques, and temples here at home and around the world.

In the United States, we have dramatically increased our efforts to fight AIDS on several fronts. In the last year alone, funding levels for minority programs increased to $250 million; the Presidents FY2001 budget pushes HIV and AIDS funding to an all-time high, bringing our spending on AIDS, research, prevention, and treatment to over $10 billion per year.

But many challenges remain here at home. As we seek to keep pace with an ever-changing epidemic, we must refuel our prevention efforts to again see a reduction in the number of new infections, which is long overdue. We must reach out to young people, and we must expand access to care, including substance-abuse treatment, to the many that now are going without.

Many of you in this room helped to make the Ryan White CARE Act a reality and, even more, helped to make it real in the lives of individuals and families each and every day. Today, the conferenced CARE Act is awaiting final passage in both the Senate and the Houseand the President is anxious to sign it. I want to thank all of you who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to make sure that it will continue to serve as a model for healthcare delivery, not only in the United States, but around the world. This piece of legislation is a shining example of the good that can come from collaboration, coordination, and concerted action.

In closing, I would like to say that after two decades of living in the shadow of AIDS, we must come together to give strength to each other. Battered by the storms of ignorance, indifference, and discrimination that still surround AIDS, we must come together to raise our voices for healing, for hope, and for change.

In the words of Fredrick Douglas:

"It is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened, and the conscience must be roused."

We must come together to build the fire that will light our way, and to stomp our feet and raise our voices until the thunder is heard across this nation, and indeed around the world.

Let us remember that our battle against AIDS is an integral part of our broader struggle for equality and for justice that continues.

Let us remember that far too many in this rich nation still go without proper care and support. Far too many still face poverty and prejudice, homelessness and isolation. And far too many still do not benefit from the information and education we know can save their lives.

And let us remember that we are far, far from the end of this journey. There is no time to rest. For the sake of all those already living with HIV and AIDS, and for all of us at risk, we must fight on.

Let us join together in what Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called our "holy war" and commit to do as we have promised to those who have passed before us.

Remember those old words of our nations struggle for civil rights:

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us;

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on, till victory is won.

If we do that, then our grandchildrens children can look back and talk with pride about a great people who found courage amidst confusion and uncertainty, who believed in their own strength and in each other, and who together fought AIDS and lived on.

Sandra Thurman