John Kerry: “last month at the African Summit on AIDS in Nigeria, the Secretary General of the U.N., Kofi Annan, called upon the…”

“last month at the African Summit on AIDS in Nigeria, the Secretary General of the U.N., Kofi Annan, called upon the international community to establish a new multibillion-dollar global fund to combat AIDS and other infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and malaria. He estimates that $7 billion to $10 billion annually will be needed to fight the global pandemic of HIV/AIDS on all fronts-- prevention, care, and treatment. This call reflects the magnitude of the challenge before all of us. The AIDS crisis has never been so devastating or so urgent as it is today. In less than two decades, AIDS has become a global epidemic, endangering the lives of millions of people, the majority of them in developing countries. It has proved more devastating than wars. In 1998, in Africa, 200,000 people died in armed conflict, but in the same time, 2.2 million people died from AIDS. It is destroying the economies of many developing countries at a critical juncture, unacceptable as that level of death would be at any time, and it is reversing half a century of developmental gains. Even more importantly, AIDS has emerged as an international security threat with the ability to destroy communities, whole generations, and even nations. Just recently, the Bush administration continued what the Clinton administration had done, which is recognizing it as a security threat to the United States of America. The statistics are chilling.…”