President Clinton's UN remarks on global health care gap

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/New/html/19990921_1.html

                   THE WHITE HOUSE 
            Office of the Press Secretary 
         (United Nations New York, New York) 

For Immediate Release 
                                                                  
Tuesday, September 21, 1999 


                 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT 
                   TO THE 54TH SESSION OF 
            THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY 

     10:35 A.M. EDT 

THE PRESIDENT: Members of the United Nations General Assembly,
good morning. I hope you will forgive me for being a little
hoarse today. I will do the best I can to be heard. 

Today we look ahead to the new millennium, and at this last
General Assembly of the 20th century, we look back on a century
that taught us much of what we need to know about the
promise of tomorrow. We have learned a great deal over the last
100 years -- how to produce enough food for a growing world
population; how human activity affects the environment;
the mysteries of the human gene; an information revolution that
now holds the promise of universal access to knowledge. 

   [snip]



Finally, to win the fight against poverty we must improve health
care for all people. Over the next 10 years in Africa AIDS is
expected to kill more people and orphan more children than all
the wars of the 20th century combined. Each year diseases like
malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia leave millions of children
without parents, millions of parents without children. Yet, for
all these diseases, vaccine research is advancing too slowly, in
part because the potential customers in need are too poor. Only
two percent of all global biomedical research is devoted to the
major killers in the developing world. 

No country can break poverty's bonds if its people are disabled
to disease and its government overwhelmed by the needs of the
ill. With U.N. leadership, we've come close to eradicating
polio, once the scourge of children everywhere. We're down to
5,000 reported cases worldwide. I've asked our Congress to fund a
major increase to finish the job; I ask other nations to
follow suit. 

We've begun a comprehensive battle against the global AIDS
epidemic. This year, I'm seeking another $100 million for
prevention, counseling and care in Africa. I want to do more to
get new drugs that prevent transmission from mothers to newborns,
to those who need them most. And today, I commit the United
States to a concerted effort to accelerate the development
and delivery of vaccines for malaria, TB, AIDS and other diseases
disproportionately affecting the developing world. Many
approaches have been proposed, from tax credits to special
funds for the purchase of these vaccines. 

To tackle these issues, I will ask public health experts, the
chief executive officers of our pharmaceutical companies,
foundation representatives and members of Congress to join me at
a special White House meeting to strengthen incentives for
research and development, to work with, not against, the private
sector, to meet our common goals. 


   [snip]

-- 
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
I can be reached at love@cptech.org, by telephone 202.387.8030,
by fax at 202.234.5176. CPT web page is http://www.cptech.org