New York - Former US President Bill Clinton has made a stong plea for developing countries to use the opportunities presented by the historic court victory on the manufacture of generic medicines last April when the major pharmaceutical companies withdrew their action against the South African government.
"Why don't we hear anything about this now?" Clinton asked at a question-and-answer session with journalists attending a two-day seminar at Columbia University on covering the global Aids crisis.
Clinton is due to visit South Africa in September to launch the International Aids Trust jointly with former president Nelson Mandela.
"I asked President Mandela to co-chair the Aids Trust and he agreed," Clinton said. He said he would visit the loveLife project to change sexual conduct among South Africa's youth.
He said it was a tragedy that developing countries had not used the court victory on patents to their advantage.
"The developing countries were supposed to go and negotiate the deals for cheaper drugs and it's not happening," said Clinton.
He said that the Bush administration had shifted its position on patented drugs and the US would make up the difference based on the new reduced prices.
He said that in Brazil, which had shown the way on negotiating cheaper drugs, 70 percent of people were taking their medicines properly.
Clinton challenged the mainly American journalists who attended the seminar: "Why are you not writing about this?"
Referring several times to the presence of Professor Helen Rees, director of the Reproductive Health Research Unit in South Africa, Clinton appealed for help from the industrialised countries, including the United States, to share the burden of caring for the millions of people living with Aids. He renewed his appeal for debt relief for countries in Africa and the developing world.
"I think we need more help from the wealthy countries," said Clinton turning to Professor Rees.
"I want to plead again for debt relief. South Africa might look like a wealthy country compared to Tanzania - and it is - but look at the (Aids) infection rates and look at the leakage (of people) they are absorbing from Zimbabwe every day."
Clinton said the US could make a huge difference to fighting the pandemic by increasing its foreign aid from the current one percent GDP to three percent.
The Bush administration could make a difference by releasing the $10bn sitting in the defence slush but which had not been earmarked for any specific purpose.
He said he was convinced that the American people were ready to accept these kinds of changes and to make the link between their own future and that of the rest of humanity if they were given the facts.
He said most Americans thought US foreign assistance, at its lowest for many years, was around 15 percent.
"They think it should be between three percent and five percent and it is actually one percent. So if we trebled it to three percent no one would complain," he said to laughter.
Clinton said that if the current 40 million people infected by Aids rose to 100 million then "some African democracies will not survive".
"There will be more soldiers and mercenaries because people will have nothing to live for. What is going to happen to these countries if they have the highest Aids rates in the world?" he asked.
Clinton said that trade with some African countries had increased by 1 000 percent since the US Congress had passed the Bill on foreign trade, but all that would be undone if the Aids cases continued to soar.
He said the high rates of increase in the Caribbean held dire warning for the United States and would escalate the epidemic in areas such as the high-density black neighbourhood of Harlem in New York.
Although the epidemic began as a disease among gay white men in the US, it has taken root in the poor neighbourhoods with high concentrations of African-Americans and Hispanics, among the youth and among women.
Clinton said that in the post-September 11 world the US had changed its priorities and had lost sight of the importance of issues such as the Aids pandemic.
"We need to do a reality check on how to build a world with less terrorists and more friends," he said. "That is the context in which we must see the HIV/Aids challenge."
Clinton said it came down to extending the same benefits as Americans had to a broader community. "It's about how you define community," he said.
"The struggle against HIV/Aids is a microcosm of the larger struggle in which we are all caught up. All the paradoxes will have to be resolved if the forces of integration are to triumph over the forces of disintegration in the century that lies ahead."