Bill Clinton on campus for World AIDS Day

Former President Bill Clinton has a message for people affected by HIV/AIDS: take the activism to YouTube.

Clinton spoke Tuesday at a panel organized by the Mailman School of Public Health to mark World AIDS Day . He was joined by Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University, and other panelists representing non-profit and community initiatives seeking to prevent the spread of AIDS. The event was sponsored by Columbia’s International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs (ICAP) and the William J. Clinton Foundation.

University President Lee Bollinger welcomed Clinton as “both a friend and a parent,” since his recently-engaged daughter Chelsea is currently studying at Mailman.

Held in a packed Roone Arledge Auditorium , the panel was part of “Universal Access and Human Rights,” a day-long campus symposium that focused on the rise of HIV/AIDS programs and global health systems, especially in developing nations with weak health care infrastructures. The panel discussion assessed the current state of the AIDS epidemic in the United States and abroad.

“For a battle that takes place 365 days a year, we know that World AIDS Day is really just a symbol, an opportunity to raise awareness,” Bollinger added, noting that Clinton was the first to denote Dec. 1 as World AIDS Day in 1995. “Today is a chance to gather and reflect on both what works and what doesn’t work.”

Panelists discussed the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the domestic incarcerated population, women and children, and minority populations throughout the world.

The Clinton foundation has provided 2 million people with HIV/AIDS medication. And ICAP, which trains peer educators in Africa, has provided more than 750 thousand dollars to support access to HIV care. Along those lines, panelists were asked, is too much money being spent on AIDS at the cost of other diseases?

Absolutely not, El-Sadr said. “It’s not a useful argument- there’s more potential for synergies and complements,” she said.

Clinton addressed the ongoing problem of mother-to-child infections, stressing that “you have to empower them [the mothers] to take this medicine by building elemental health care networks in very poor areas where they don’t exist. If you create an opportunity for treatment, people will show up.” Clinton also stated that universal health care would help alleviate the domestic HIV/AIDS situation.
All panelists agreed that more should be done to cut the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS through direct and open discussion.

“We need to flood YouTube and Facebook and all these other sites with a hundred thousand stories about individuals fighting with HIV/AIDS,” Clinton said.

But audience member Suchi Bansal, MPH ‘10, said she was disappointed with the panel. “I was expecting a more detailed, focused conversation,” she said. “How are we going to implement better health systems going forward? What exactly is the future of more effective health-care delivery systems?” Still, she said she was heartened to hear Clinton’s pledge to talk to the White House about proposals concerning governmental health care spending cuts.

In her closing remarks, Linda Fried, DeLamar Professor of Public Health and Epidemiology and Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health, stated that the “momentous afternoon” served to summarize the day-long symposium that sought to explore the needs of people infected with HIV/AIDS.

“The problems are complex and the solutions are not always simple, although they may seem clear,” she said. “HIV/AIDS is a public health problem, but the discussion we just had exemplified that the solutions are with all of us.”