I’m back home in Chappaqua, New York, following my return from Africa. As I think back over everything I saw and did in Africa, my thoughts keep returning to a soccer field in Lusaka, Zambia, where I met an energetic and courageous group of kids — some HIV-positive, some not.
They were led by a man named Victor, who left his job at the Ministry of Agriculture after losing his mother and three half-sisters to HIV/AIDS and decided to dedicate his life to educating his peers about health and HIV prevention. Victor co-founded an organization called Africa Directions, which runs a youth recreation center. He is also part of the Zambia Scouts Association, which is helping to teach children across Zambia about HIV/AIDS through soccer and other games.
During my visit, Victor invited me to watch a soccer match and to play a game with about twenty children that emphasized the importance of HIV/AIDS testing. I watched as the kids stood shoulder to shoulder and formed two lines facing each other. Each row was given a tennis ball to pass behind our backs, and as we did, Victor led cheers and encouraged everyone to hide their passes. After a few minutes, he announced it was time to stop passing the ball and called on a participant from each row to identify where the opposing team’s ball ended up. Each child made a guess, but no one got it right, prompting laughter from the players. Victor explained that the tennis ball is like HIV/AIDS: you can’t tell if someone has HIV/AIDS just by looking at them. He then led the kids in a frank discussion about the virus, stressing the importance of testing and explaining that we must give our “teammates” with HIV the care and support they need.
Over 130,000 children are living with HIV/AIDS in Zambia, and I’m proud that my Foundation is working with the Zambian government to make testing available to all youth in Zambia — even babies as young as six weeks old. Once they’ve been tested, young people with HIV/AIDS can get the care and treatment they need — including access to free, high-quality medications through a partnership between my Foundation and a purchasing entity known as UNITAID funded by a consortium of countries — to ensure they stay healthy enough to go to school, play soccer and live healthy lives.
This kind of progress is being made across Africa. Programs like Victor’s are emerging across the continent, and more people like him are harnessing their power to make a difference in their communities. We’re finally overcoming the fear and stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS, which for too long stood in the way of meaningful efforts to combat the pandemic. I’m proud that my Foundation is on the frontlines of this fight, and I look forward to my next opportunity to visit Africa and see how much further we’ll have come in a year’s time.
[Editor’s Note: Grassroot Soccer conducted the HIV-awareness exercises President Clinton references in his entry. Learn more at www.grassrootsoccer.org.]
Submitted by: Oliver Sabot
Director of CHAI’s Malaria Initiative
During my travels in Africa, I am constantly stuck by how simple things, things that you and I take for granted every day, can mean the difference between a child living and dying. Take this case for example:
In rural Tanzania, an anxious mother walks into a dusty, one-room drug shop. Her child is lying at home burning with fever, shaking as malaria parasites attack his body. The mother knows she needs to treat her child quickly – many other women in the village have lost children to malaria soon after the symptoms first appeared – but as she scans the shelves lined with packages and bottles, she realizes she doesn’t know what medicine she should buy. Eventually, she buys a plain, yellow box and rushes home. Sitting next to her sick child, she opens the box and pulls out more than 20 pills and a folded piece of paper with tiny words in a language she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know how many pills she should give her child and how often. She doesn’t know how she can get the child, who is barely conscious, to swallow the pills. And she doesn’t know that she must continue treating the child for three full days, even after he seems to be better. She has brought life-saving drugs within inches of her child, but his life is still in danger.
This scene is currently being replayed throughout Tanzania and Africa, with tragic results. The world is mobilizing to make the most effective malaria treatment, called ACTs, available to millions more people in need. The Clinton Foundation is contributing to that effort by seeking to negotiate lower prices for these drugs and create models for distributing low-priced drugs to even the most remote areas. But increasing the availability of drugs is only half the battle.
Working with Populations Services International and the Government of Tanzania, the Clinton Foundation has developed a simple solution that will ensure that patients have the information they need to use malaria drugs properly. All the ACTs that are being distributed through the pilot program announced by President Clinton during his recent trip to Tanzania are placed into new packaging that provides essential information in the local language and pictures. With this packaging, patients are able to clearly understand how many pills they should take and when. And it’s attractive, encouraging patients to pick these drugs instead of the many ineffective drugs that often line shelves.
In the scope of the global battle against malaria, putting drugs into improved packaging may seem like a drop in the bucket. But simple solutions such as these can mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people. During those terrible moments, all the mother in rural Tanzania wants is to cure her dying child. Thanks to the Clinton Foundation, the next time she walks into a shop, she will have that power.
Submitted by: Dr. Yahya Ipuge
Country Director, Tanzania
The crowd began to gather here in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, at noon, hanging from overflowing buses, riding in on old bikes or just walking from surrounding villages. By the time President Clinton arrived in the late afternoon, more than 6,000 Tanzanians had gathered on the dusty soccer field and along the side of the road that ran through this small village, eager to hear from the man who had helped bring affordable HIV/AIDS treatment to their communities. Every Tanzanian who came shared two things in common: they were eager to hear President Clinton speak, and they had at some point in their lives had malaria.
Malaria to most Tanzanians is like the common cold to Americans. But unlike a cold, malaria is deadly, especially for young children. But it doesn’t have to be: all it takes is six pills, three days and fifty cents save the life of a child. Yet every day three thousand children across Africa die from the disease.
President Clinton visited a one-room private drug shop to see firsthand what tens of millions of Tanzanians experience when they visit these shops for malaria treatment. The scene is common across Africa: shelves filled with old, ineffective malaria drugs and none of the recommended effective drugs. As the shop owners explained to the President, the effective drugs, at $10 per dose, were simply too expensive for most people to afford, to they took their chances on the cheaper, inadequate alternatives.
After his tour, President Clinton told the crowd that the Clinton Foundation is working with the government of Tanzania to lower the price of the most effective malaria drugs in these shops by 95 percent so that they are affordable to even the poorest people.
As with the battle against HIV/AIDS, there is still much more to be done to drive back malaria. But as we drove back to the airport today with President Clinton, we passed a truck full of effective malaria medicines that will soon be lining the shelves of rural drug shops and saving the lives of thousands of Tanzanians.
Submitted by: Eric Nonacs
Foreign Policy Advisor to President Clinton
The weekend brings little rest for President Clinton and the hardy group of people traveling with him on his tour of Clinton Foundation projects in Africa. Today, we are in Lusaka, Zambia. It’s the first time President Clinton has ever been here, and we have a full slate of events ahead of us. More on that tomorrow…
Yesterday, we visited the rural district of Neno, in southern Malawi. About 85% of Malawians live in rural areas, so this visit provided an invaluable window into the numerous challenges faced by the vast majority of the population including limited access to health facilities, economic opportunity, and basic infrastructure.
Our Clinton Hunter Development Initiative is working with local authorities there on several projects to strengthen the community’s health care system. We toured a construction site for a new district hospital and adjacent staff housing we’re helping to build in partnership with Partners In Health. The hospital complex looked like a normal construction site: noisy, covered in machinery and teeming with hard hats. But there is more being built than just a hospital - this project alone has created hundreds of jobs and trained local women in construction work, contributing to a foundation of sustainable growth in the community.
While in Neno, we met up with Dr. Paul Farmer, one of the founders of Partners in Health (and featured in our video). Much has been written about Paul, his intensity and his inspiring dedication to health care for the world’s poorest. While all of that is true, he also happens to be one of the warmest and funniest people I have ever met, qualities he shares with President Clinton that often get lost on the printed page.
Our too-brief stop in Neno gave us an opportunity to better understand how 70% of the people on the continent live. Makes me thankful for the things I have at home – running water, a doctor only a subway stop away…hopefully our work will help put these amenities that we take for granted in reach of these isolated regions. Now, on to Zambia…
Submitted by: Amy Lockwood
HIV/AIDS Pediatrics Program Director
As the director of CHAI’s pediatrics program, I have met hundreds of children with HIV in desperate need of care and treatment. I’ll never forget one little girl I met on my first visit to Rwanda last winter, named Christina. She’s HIV-positive. An orphan, Christina lives with her aunt and uncle in an isolated rural area, more than a three hour walk from the nearest health care center.
Christina’s aunt and uncle don’t have the 1000 RwF (about $2) to pay for the transport, and so when I came to visit the family with a social worker, I found out she had missed her last appointment. While her aunt and uncle argued with the social worker, she was happy to hold my hand. But after awhile, it became clear that she understood, at least in part, what was being said about her. So, rather than let her absorb the frustration all around, we got into an intense game of patty-cake—just slapping, no singing.
We moved on to studying my hair, which Christina thought was so soft she just wanted to pet it and me. Until I sneezed. Then Christina got worried, and while laying both her little hands on my head, said a little prayer asking that God keep me well and stop my sneezing.
Thinking of her now, I get tears in my eyes and a smile on my face. It’s an emotion I’m not familiar with and don’t have a name for. This is the feeling that inspires CHAI’s pediatric work around the world, helping to save the lives of thousands of children like Christina. All children deserve access to a health center and treatment. But most importantly, they all deserve a chance to lead a healthy, happy life like you and me.
Submitted by: Eric Nonacs
Foreign Policy Advisor to President Clinton
Traveling abroad with President Clinton is always an honor. It’s also exhausting. I’m up at 4 this morning to catch a flight to Malawi to check out some of the work our Clinton Hunter Development Initiative is doing to help farmers in one of the poorest and driest areas of the country. Though it’s enormously exciting work to see firsthand, I’m definitely going to need some coffee.
Yesterday’s itinerary was packed as well. I had the privilege of joining President Clinton on a visit he made to the John Mitchell Primary School in the Jeppestown section of Johannesburg, to visit with City Year South Africa a local branch of the dynamic American youth service organization. City Year made a commitment at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative to double the size of its program in South Africa, and it was amazing to meet with young leaders who are dedicating their time and talents to their community. There is nothing like spending time around children — with all of their exuberance, enthusiasm, and hopefulness — to sweep away the pessimism that can sometimes engulf you when you focus on issues like poverty and HIV/AIDS in the developing world. All of us who accompanied President Clinton today were reminded why the work of the Foundation is so important.
Prior to visiting with City Year, our group had a singular meeting with Nelson Mandela, a personal hero of mine, who is, in a very real sense, the “father” of South Africa. Visiting the school, I thought about how those kids are the heirs to President Mandela’s legacy and embody the future of South Africa. But these young people aren’t thinking about that – they’re just focused on what they can do to make an impact today.
All in all, the trip has gotten off to an inspiring start. Everyone headed to Malawi today is in high spirits despite the early hour, and hopefully my fellow travelers will be able to send updates in the week ahead.
After the 14-hour plane ride from the Dominican Republic, it feels good to be on the ground again. I’m also delighted to be back in South Africa. It’s been nine years since I was the first U.S. president ever to travel to this wonderful country. On that first visit, Hillary and I laid a brick at a women’s center in Johannesburg, marking the beginning of my personal commitment to help rebuild a new South Africa. Since then, I’ve tried to return as often as I can. Almost a decade later, my Foundation carries on this commitment through its work here and throughout the continent, and I’m eager to see firsthand the progress we’re helping to achieve.
Johannesburg is one of the cities partnering with my Clinton Climate Initiative to perform energy-saving renovations to their buildings. These simple, cost-effective measures, which we are working on in 16 cities around the world, will have a tremendous impact on lowering carbon emissions from urban areas while actually saving money for the buildings’ owners and creating jobs.
Based on all the scientific evidence, it’s impossible to deny that our planet is warming. Africa stands to suffer the most from global climate change, so it’s only right that we partner with cities like Johannesburg to help them do their part to stop these alarming trends. By implementing eco-friendly policies and deploying green technologies, African countries have a remarkable opportunity to emerge as leaders in the fight against global warming.
Throughout our trip, my staff and I will be keeping an eye on what supporters like you are saying on our blog, so please share your thoughts with me. I look forward to reading your responses as soon as I have a chance. Until then, I hope you’ll support my Foundation and the important work we have begun. It’s a great day to be in Africa.
Listen to President Clinton talk about the South African concept of “ubuntu” and how it applies to the work of the Clinton Foundation.
Coming to City Year I heard that I would be making a difference, but I was not sure how. I wondered: “How am I supposed to make that difference? Will I be able to do it?” I doubted that I could make a difference in my own life, and making a difference in someone else’s seemed like a long shot. Until I met the children, until I got to know them. The children at my school are completely different to what I had ever envisioned them to be.
A few remarkable children fell under my supervision, called the starfish group (grade 1 – 3). A learner by the name of Donovan stood out from the rest. From the very first day the City Year team stepped into Eastgate Primary School, Donovan was right there. Always wanting to be with us, help us, talk to us, anything really as long as he was with us. He had shared that he was having trouble at home and that obviously affected his performance at school, as Donovan was in a remedial class. Although he was a very special child, he was also very disruptive.
On this particular day Donovan was extremely disruptive and wouldn’t listen. I believe that he just wanted attention because no one else would give him that. Things became out of hand when Donovan pushed another learner by the name of Nicolas. Nicolas notified me immediately: “Lydon, Donovan is bullying me and it is lowering my self esteem.” I was left speechless. About a week before I had facilitated a lesson on self esteem. At that moment I did not know whether to reprimand Donovan or congratulate Nicolas. Moments later, Donovan apologised for what he had done. I had not even said a word, yet Donovan was able to recognise that he was doing something wrong and that it affected someone else.
On that warm afternoon, the two boys ran playing as if nothing had happened. I still stood in amazement. Thus far every little thing that happens I am grateful for. Learners influencing each other in a positive way - these moments leave me with a great feeling and two powerful statements: “I am definitely making a difference and, yes, I can do it.”
[Editor’s Note: Lydon is a member of City Year South Africa’s third class of young service leaders which provides mentoring and support to more than a dozen schools in Johannesburg. City Year made a commitment to expand its program at the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, giving a new generation of leaders an opportunity to make a difference in South Africa.]
My name is Ntombizethu Ngceza, but you can call me Zethu. I am 17 years old. I lost my father in 2004, and my mother died in 2005 because of HIV and AIDS. My siblings and I were left with no home and no hope. It was very hard on me, but I had to face it because I love my siblings and they deserve the best.
One day at my primary school I met Sister Guza from Ubuntu, and she introduced me to Sister Mzalazala. Sister Mzalazala works so hard in order for us just to get a safe place just as every child. Ubuntu plays a big role in my life because each and every month they make sure we’ve got a food parcel, each and every month they make sure we’ve got electricity, and they make sure that that we don’t pay school fees because we don’t have money.
I don’t know where I would be without the Ubuntu Education Fund. Mr. Vincent Mai and Ubuntu’s commitment through the Clinton Global Initiative didn’t just help me and my family only, it helped hundreds of children. I believe that a commitment is a promise that can change the world. In return I have decided to make my own commitment to start an orphan support group for orphan girls in my school. Just like the many organizations and people who have made commitments through CGI, this is my way of changing the world.
How will you?
Watch Zethu tell her story and make her commitment at the Mid Year Meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in 2007.
Submitted by: Peter Kulemeka
Country Director, Malawi
Greetings from Malawi! In just a few short days President Clinton will be visiting us, and preparations are already underway for his arrival.
Although we work in a country facing many challenges, Clinton Foundation staff here in rural Malawi are eager to share with him – and you – the great progress we are making in partnership with the Government and many communities. We’ve been invited to work here by the Government and our efforts to implement their vision are very exciting.
Today, Malawi’s economy is centered around agriculture, with over 85% of the population living in rural areas. Many Malawians don’t have access to clean water and sanitation, or complete health services. The staff from the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative is working to respond to these local needs and to strengthen the ability of Malawians to lift themselves out of poverty.
Since launching our work last year, we’ve assisted in the registration and financing of the Neno Hills Farmers’ Association (NHFA), through which 1,200 Malawian farmers have been able to procure improved wheat seed and fertilizer, most of them for the first time.
We’ve also joined with Partners In Health and the Government on construction of Neno District Hospital and 23 adjacent houses for hospital staff.
The Clinton Foundation also is helping to manage the HIV/AIDS pandemic that perpetuates conditions of poverty. We have one of the stronger scale-up efforts in sub-Saharan Africa, and there has been a tenfold increase in the number of people receiving care and treatment since 2003. In addition, we already have helped 1,500 children start the treatment they need to survive. Still, half the people who need treatment can’t access it. So there is good progress in this area but there remain some major challenges.
We will continue to work with the Government and people of Malawi to approach the challenges as opportunities.
If you have any comments or questions about our work, please feel free to leave it in a comment.
I’m back home in Chappaqua, New York, following my return from Africa. As I think back over everything I saw and did in Africa, my thoughts keep returning to a soccer field in Lusaka, Zambia, where I met an energetic and courageous group of kids — some HIV-positive, some not.
After a few minutes, he announced it was time to stop passing the ball and called on a participant from each row to identify where the opposing team’s ball ended up. Each child made a guess, but no one got it right, prompting laughter from the players. Victor explained that the tennis ball is like HIV/AIDS: you can’t tell if someone has HIV/AIDS just by looking at them. He then led the kids in a frank discussion about the virus, stressing the importance of testing and explaining that we must give our “teammates” with HIV the care and support they need.
During my travels in Africa, I am constantly stuck by how simple things, things that you and I take for granted every day, can mean the difference between a child living and dying. Take this case for example:
The crowd began to gather here in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, at noon, hanging from overflowing buses, riding in on old bikes or just walking from surrounding villages. By the time President Clinton arrived in the late afternoon, more than 6,000 Tanzanians had gathered on the dusty soccer field and along the side of the road that ran through this small village, eager to hear from the man who had helped bring affordable HIV/AIDS treatment to their communities. Every Tanzanian who came shared two things in common: they were eager to hear President Clinton speak, and they had at some point in their lives had malaria.
The weekend brings little rest for President Clinton and the hardy group of people traveling with him on his tour of Clinton Foundation projects in Africa. Today, we are in Lusaka, Zambia. It’s the first time President Clinton has ever been here, and we have a full slate of events ahead of us. More on that tomorrow…
As the director of CHAI’s pediatrics program, I have met hundreds of children with HIV in desperate need of care and treatment. I’ll never forget one little girl I met on my first visit to Rwanda last winter, named Christina. She’s HIV-positive. An orphan, Christina lives with her aunt and uncle in an isolated rural area, more than a three hour walk from the nearest health care center.
Traveling abroad with President Clinton is always an honor. It’s also exhausting. I’m up at 4 this morning to catch a flight to Malawi to check out some of the work our Clinton Hunter Development Initiative is doing to help farmers in one of the poorest and driest areas of the country. Though it’s enormously exciting work to see firsthand, I’m definitely going to need some coffee.
Greetings from Malawi! In just a few short days President Clinton will be visiting us, and preparations are already underway for his arrival.
