Notes From Clinton Global Initiative Opening Session On Women

Former President Bill Clinton today kicked off the Clinton Global Initiative Plenary Session on Women. He entered to Also sprach Zarathustra, the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. He started by giving some facts and figures about Sub-Saharan Africa and HIV, saying that getting HIV is like walking along and then suddenly having a concrete block dropped on you. He said these girls and young women are the best ambassadors because even though they have been sexually abused they refuse to live their lives as victims.

Clinton said that women do 66% of world’s work, but they produce 10% of the world’s income and own only 1% of the world’s property. 40% of the three billion people who work are women and 70% of agricultural labor is performed by women, but women lack independence. He also said that investing in women’s health could increase productivity in Africa by fifteen billion dollars per year.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a commitment to Rwanda and talked about how women have been active there. Bloomberg said he is involved in Southern Sudan and Congo, working with an organization called Women for Women. It is an attempt to get women to contribute to their countries.

President Barack Obama's Ambassador At-Large for Global Women's Issues, Melanne Verveer, said that empowering women combats extremism.

Ambassador Robert Zoellick said that he is trying to help with the Adolescent Girls Initiative, an organization that hopes to work with 3,000 girls and mentor them to make sure that education is connected to a job.

Zainab Salbi talked about wars and children. She said 80% of refugees in the world are women and children. Even after rape these women succeed because they have children. They are the ones who are keeping the children going to school. The only group of people who are keeping a society going are women, and they do not have a seat at the table and they are not being heard.

Rex Tillerson from Exxon Mobil talked about technologies. He said low technologies can impact on a local level. He said they are working on what types of technologies work.

Edna Ismail was the first nurse practitioner in Somalia. She said they do not even need advanced technology. The age that a woman marries and nutrition are important to overall health. Genital cutting information is not reaching the grandmothers and people who have kept this tradition. Senegal has passed a law outlawing this, but a law does not change behavior on a village level.

Diane Sawyer asked what the biggest failure was, and Zainab Salbi asked said it was a challenge. But girls at the age of nine get cows as a dowry. She said you must be able to educate women so that there is incentive for women to be educated so they are more valuable to the family than cows.

There are a million young women in the sex trade. The United States passed one of the first laws to prevent human trafficking. It is hopeful because the business community is getting involved. One cent of every development dollar goes to girls.

Some programs make the payments directly to women, such as incentives to go to school. Must turn incentives so that the legal structure reflects the situation.

Economic crisis poses a threat to AIDS treatment worldwide

The recent economic crisis may pose a threat to HIV/AIDS patients worldwide. With the financial future of so many countries in question, it appears that the funding that has provided retro viral therapy for over 300 million people may be cut. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, gave a strong warning about cutting funding.

"Interrupting that...or slowing down would not only be a disaster for millions of people but also, it would undermine the huge investments that have been made over the last few years, just when the return of the investment is starting to come now."

Speaking at a Center for Strategic and International Studies discussion on "the past and present challenges for Global Health and AIDS", Piot said that the U.S.'s effort in combating AIDS internationally has saved millions of lives.

"It was really heartening to hear President Bush and Secretary Rice...at the summit on development, to make a plea for continuing American leadership here, and I hope the next President will follow on the same lines."

Piot stated that the world's funding must continue to be a priority to guarantee that 3 million people on retro viral therapy can remain in treatment, those who do not have treatment find it, and that AIDS prevention continues to be pursued.

Piot discussed the necessary steps to continue fighting AIDS, including confronting HIV/AIDS with a multilateral approach; using an approach that blends science with human rights, and adopting an attitude of immediate action.

"If we would have waited until Health systems and Health services [were] functioning very well before starting with retro viral therapy, which was the conventional wisdom of every single donor, I know what would have happened with the 3 or 4 million people on retroviral therapy today. They would be dead," said Piot.

Struggles and victories in Chinese and Indian health issues

“Health Affairs: The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere” held a briefing on health in India and China. China faces a massive obesity epidemic and problems with insurance coverage. India is confronting AIDS. And, both China and India have aging populations.

Philip Musgrove, Deputy Editor of “Health Affairs,” said that although it seems that infant mortality is decreasing and health spending is increasing in China and India, those positive results are deceptive. He said that lower infant mortality rates do not necessarily reflect better health. Also, the increased health spending is out-of-pocket, not national funding. He said that China struggles to help people in the interior of the country and that India must help citizens in areas that have not kept up with national progress.

Kees Kostermans of the World Bank said that India handles its AIDS problems well. Their programs started early, in 1987, with strong focuses on prevention and data collection. Because of India’s high level of political commitment and ambitious programs targeted to high-risk groups, HIV prevalence in India decreased.

Somnath Chatterji from the World Health Organization added that Chinese and Indian populations are aging. He said that in the next four decades, 40 percent of the world’s old will live in India and China. The two nations’ populations are growing older, but health is getting worse. He recommended educating and empowering people to care for themselves now rather than wait for the sudden increase in mortality.

On the topic of Chinese health insurance, Tsung-Mei Cheng from Princeton University said that China hopes to achieve universal health coverage by 2020.