UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

Chapter 6167Former US PresidentBill Clinton talking toyoung people during therecording of MTV’S‘Staying Alive Forum’ atthe International AIDSConference in Barcelona,2002 MTVPartly inspired by the speeches at Barcelona and the evidence of successful antiretroviraltherapy programmes in Africa, in October 2002, the Dutch Government organized a meetingof donors (together with WHO and the UNAIDS Secretariat) in Amsterdam on ‘IntegratingHAART [highly active antiretroviral therapy] in care, support and treatment’. This was aturning point for the donor community in terms of resistance to spending money on thewidespread use of antiretroviral therapy – though not for all.Schwartländer recalled: “Peter Piot and myself as the Director of WHO’s HIV Departmenthad been invited and we tried to move the treatment access in developing countries agendaforward. The donors saw only the problems. Pushing an agenda that the donors hate carriessubstantial risks. You may actually undermine your own resource-base”.He continued: “In that meeting, the Canadians actually put forward their global strategy onHIV/AIDS, which didn’t mention [the] word treatment. Yet about a year later, the Canadianswere the single biggest donor that saved and carried forward the ‘3 by 5’ initiative byfinancing it in the WHO”.