Bill Gates Announces Foundation Visit to Africa with the Carter Center to Highlight Need for Increased Financing and Comprehensive Strategies to Fight HIV/AIDS

SEATTLE -- Bill Gates announced today, at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, an upcoming trip to Africa by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Carter Center that is intended to draw attention to the urgent need for comprehensive strategies to fight HIV/AIDS.

 

The delegation, which will travel to Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria from March 6-12, 2002, will be led by Bill Gates' father, William H. Gates Sr., co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn. During the weeklong visit, they plan to meet with heads of state, government ministers, health workers, faith-based groups, volunteers, the private sector, and people living with HIV/AIDS. 

 

"Stopping the transmission of HIV is the foundation's number one global health priority," confirmed Gates. "We know that strategies including prevention, education, and outreach to those most at risk of contracting and spreading HIV/AIDS can effectively arrest the spread of the pandemic. More than 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, a disease that is devastating to families, communities, and national economies in Africa, Asia and around the world. Governments in both the developing and the developed world need to step up their investment in a dramatic way."

 

The idea for the visit to Africa grew out of a recent meeting between President Carter and Mr. Gates Sr. in Seattle, whose organizations share a commitment to infectious disease prevention.

 

"The strength and vitality of any country is directly proportional to the health of its people," said President Carter.  "Our visit is to call attention to the need for the right resources and the right policies to stop the transmission of HIV and other crippling diseases."
 
"There is reason to hope. We know that the challenge and heartbreak of HIV/AIDS can be overcome with a confluence of funding, science and political willpower," said Bill Gates, Sr. "Experience has proven that comprehensive strategies dramatically reduce infection rates.  In Uganda, for example, prevalence of HIV in adults has been reduced from 14 percent to 8 percent through an aggressive program centered on high-risk outreach and education. And, in Senegal, a multi-faceted strategy has held infection rates to just 2 percent."

 

The Carter Center is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization founded in 1982 in Atlanta, GA, by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter in partnership with Emory University.  The Center leads a worldwide eradication coalition that has reduced Guinea worm disease by 98 percent. The Center's slogan is "Waging Peace.  Fighting Disease.  Building Hope."  For more information, visit http://www.cartercenter.org.