Pangaea Partners with Clinton Foundation on Countrywide AIDS Treatment Programs

Former President Bill Clinton has made the global fight against AIDS a priority of the Clinton Foundation.

The William Jefferson Clinton Foundation has tapped the Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation as its treatment partner in Rwanda and the Bahamas as part of a bold, new plan to help government health services rapidly develop countrywide HIV/AIDS treatment programs. The partnership will focus on establishing local capacity to provide comprehensive HIV treatment and care, including the use of HIV antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), as well as to support the greater integration of treatment and care services with the countries' overall HIV prevention efforts.

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		Articles in This Issue:
		•	Pangaea Partners with Clinton Foundation on Countrywide AIDS Treatment Programs
		•	Dr. Goosby's Global View: A Response to the Bush Administration's Proposal for Global AIDS Funding
		•	Pangea Staff Profile: Renè Durazzo - Vice President, Global Programs
		•	Pfizer Provides $11 Million to Build AIDS Clinic in Uganda
		•	Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Funds Treatment Program in South Africa
		•	Goosby Joins Bono's Heart of America Tour
		•	Rwandan President Honored During Visit to San Francisco

"We are enormously excited about the potential of this new partnership to realize tangible benefits for persons living with HIV/AIDS, " said Pangaea Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Eric Goosby. "President Clinton fully understands the devastating impact of HIV and his commitment and involvement will be of tremendous value."

President Clinton has made the international fight against HIV/AIDS a personal priority since leaving the White House and has created a special AIDS initiative within the Clinton Foundation led by his former senior health care advisor, Ira Magaziner. He has promised to help raise the funds necessary to pay for countrywide programs for HIV treatment and care in countries like Rwanda, the Bahamas, and Mozambique where conditions are right for program development and replication. As Mr. Magaziner said in a recent interview published in the October 17, 2002 edition of The Chronicle of Philanthropy: "President Clinton is trusted in the developing world and he has the capacity to mobilize resources there. And yet he can also mobilize the developed world to take action." The Clinton Foundation has signed formal understandings related to AIDS treatment programs with the governments of Rwanda, Mozambique, and Tanzania as well as the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States.

Dr. Goosby commented: "President Clinton is committed to developing a very ambitious treatment initiative that would rapidly scale up care in countries of small to medium size to cover an entire country. He's in a unique position to bring all the players to the table, including government leaders, health officials, drug companies, research institutions, businesspeople, and non-profits. Partners like Pangaea will provide the medical, management, and program development and evaluation expertise necessary to develop treatment programs that can be replicated on a wide scale."

Ira Magaziner discussed the Clinton Foundation's rationale for joining forces with Pangaea: "Pangaea's deep knowledge of treatment issues surrounding the global HIV/AIDS epidemic and their experience organizing efforts to fight AIDS in the U.S. and the developing world makes Pangaea a very attractive partner for the Clinton Foundation. We've already seen how effective Pangaea can be in helping to develop AIDS treatment programs in Rwanda, Uganda and South Africa and we think they will be a key player in the development of countrywide treatment programs throughout the world."

The partnership will build on existing infrastructure. For example, in April 2001, Dr. Goosby was invited by the Office of the First Lady of Rwanda, Madame Jeanette Kagame, to provide technical assistance to a government initiative to integrate comprehensive HIV care and treatment programs for women and their families within the country's existing health delivery structures. In addition, Pangaea has been working with the Rwandan Ministry of Health to develop several pilot HIV treatment and care sites in the capital city of Kigali. Pangaea's Deborah von Zinkernagel and Paul Bouey have been instrumental in developing models for delivery of care and program evaluation that will be applied on a larger scale throughout the country. "The Clinton partnership will help support broad expansion of these pilot programs from the Capital to all provinces in Rwanda," Dr. Goosby explained.

President George Bush's 2003 State of the Union pledge to devote $15 billion over five years to international AIDS treatment programs has helped bring the concept of large scale treatment efforts closer to reality. Pangaea's Dr. Goosby noted: "Where before, organizations like ours were focused on developing small model programs with available funds from non-profits, drug companies and government agencies, we can now take those programs as a starting point for national efforts to replicate successful models of care across the countryside. In the past we might have one clinic devoted to treating hundreds of people in the surrounding area -- now we are working on plans that could eventually lead to the development of hundreds of clinics treating tens of thousands of affected people."

Local government leaders and health officials in Rwanda are in the process of meeting and developing a countrywide proposal for HIV/AIDS care and treatment that will be finished in the first half of 2003. The Bahamas plan was completed in 2002 and Mozambique finished its countrywide plan earlier this year. According to Dr. Goosby, "Those involved in the planning process in Rwanda have been tremendously energized by the process, for the first time believing that the international community will be supporting them with both money and expertise to tackle the whole network of problems that they face." Pangaea Program Director René Durazzo added: "Under the leadership of President Kagame, the government has convened forums of all the partners working in Rwanda. New survey numbers will soon be available to estimate the numbers of people in need of care and treatment, complemented by a broad assessment of what's available to treat them, including the capacity of existing clinics and hospitals. The next stage is to think concretely about what will be required to ramp up capacity in existing clinics to deliver ARVs, including the training of providers on site and access to expert consultation within the country."

Dr. Goosby concluded: "The remarkable thing to me is that we're talking about the whole country, not two clinics. We're talking about moving it from small numbers to extraordinarily large numbers as rapidly as possible. It's an amazingly difficult organizational challenge, but it's the right challenge." As President Clinton said in The New York Times on International AIDS Day, December 1, 2002, "We can and must do more to stop the spread of AIDS by doing more to treat people who already have it. Now that we have the medical capacity to save and improve the lives of millions of people, there is no other moral or practical choice."