Chairman Kerry Opening Statement At Hearing On Global Health Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) chaired a hearing exploring the challenges and opportunities in global health.
BigNews.Biz - Mar 11,2010 - Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) chaired a hearing exploring the challenges and opportunities in global health.
Full text of Chairman Kerry’s opening statement as prepared is below:
We are very pleased to welcome two of our nation’s most important leaders on global health—one a former President of the United States, and the other the CEO and Chairman of one of America’s most transformative companies.
Long after their own places in history were secure, both Bill Clinton and Bill Gates made it their passion to write an impressive new chapter in the effort to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.
Fighting HIV/AIDS has long been at the top of that list. And during a polarizing era in America’s politics, it has been the kind of bipartisan success story that defines our democracy at its best. Back in 1999 and 2000, I was pleased to work with Jesse Helms, Bill Frist, and many partners from both sides of the aisle to pass comprehensive HIV/AIDS legislation that laid the foundation for PEPFAR.
Today, thanks to these programs, over 2.4 million people are receiving life-saving treatment and nearly 350,000 babies of HIV-positive mothers have been born HIV-free. That’s not enough—but it does represent a remarkable achievement.
What’s more, we have made great strides against malaria. This, in turn, has cut childhood mortality in some areas by as much as one third. And the Global Fund, where every American dollar is matched twice over, has helped to prevent millions of deaths across 140 countries.
But as long as so many lives remain at risk, we cannot rest on past accomplishments. As the Administration finalizes its new Global Health Initiative, we must ask ourselves: Where should we go from here? How can we build on success?
The Global Health Initiative has rightly identified several core principles that should guide our thinking:
First, health systems are more than the sum of their parts. Even as we expand our fight against HIV/AIDS, we have to look beyond the vertical silo of any single disease.
Second, a holistic approach leads us to focus on the women and girls who are at the center of each family’s health, but are too often marginalized by their economies and health systems. This includes taking on maternal mortality, which robs families of half a million young mothers every year.
And third, because we seek to empower other countries to eventually assume full responsibility for the care of their own citizens, we must recognize their priorities and the importance of building local capacity.
These principles informed the strong bipartisan message of the Lantos-Hyde PEPFAR Reauthorization bill of 2008. And I hope they will provide the underpinnings for strong bipartisan support going forward for advancing global health and strengthening the fight against HIV/AIDS.
My wife Teresa and I saw firsthand the most courageous and frustrating realities of this struggle when we visited the Umgeni Primary School near Durban, South Africa in late 2007. We saw caregivers who devote their lives
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