Clinton lends support to Aids initiative

People can no longer sit back and blame their governments for not addressing the Aids crisis in developing countries, former US president Bill Clinton said yesterday.

He said the Irish Government had already been "quite generous" but governments did not have the capacity to address the Aids problem without the work of non-government organisations. These organisations could not survive without support from the public and the corporate world.

"We cannot just say anymore 'why doesn't the Government do something about it?' " Mr Clinton said. "The good news is, we can turn this thing around in a hurry."

The Clinton Foundation is involved in numerous Aids initiatives in developing countries. "The thing that makes this so frustrating for those of us who work at it is we could fix this if we just deployed the resources in the way we know works. There are smart people in all these countries who are more than willing to work with us," he said.

Mr Clinton was speaking at a fundraising breakfast for the Rose Project - an Aids initiative in Africa - in the Berkeley Court Hotel in Dublin yesterday.

The breakfast was expected to raise up to €200,000 for the Irish project. It was attended by 350 guests including business people such as Denis O'Brien as well as the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, US ambassador James Kenny, Justin Kilcullen of Trócaire and Progressive Democrats TD Liz O'Donnell.

Some of the guests had brought copies of Mr Clinton's autobiography in the hope that he would sign them. The former president received standing ovations before and after his speech. He then posed for photographs in a private area with some of the guests.

Mr Clinton left Ireland for India, where he is also promoting Aids projects, last night. He told the Dublin audience that the first time a friend of his died of Aids was in the mid-1980s. "There were no anti-retroviral drugs. He had huge black welts all over his face and hands and I watched him die . . . Hillary and I had several more friends who died."

He said he had been in villages in Africa where there was nobody under 55 or older than eight or nine. "Everybody else is dead."

The death rate from Aids had dropped by almost 80 per cent in the 1990s in the US because of the development of anti-retroviral drugs, Mr Clinton said.

However, Aids victims in other countries were not so lucky and about 8,000 people were dying from Aids every day. The Irish Government had supported a Mozambique project that his foundation was involved in "and I'm very grateful for that".

The Rose Project was founded two years ago by nurse and psychologist Mary Donohoe. It supports an Irish Franciscan missionary group that is caring for people with HIV/Aids in Kenya.

Ms Donohoe said 500 people were dying every day in Kenya alone "for the most part without any public comment".