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CNN Live At Daybreak

World AIDS Conference Wraps Up Today

Aired July 12, 2002 - 05:16   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: That World AIDS Conference wraps up today in Barcelona, Spain. Delegates have delivered alarming assessments of the epidemic. But former President Bill Clinton has offered poor nations some advice on how to battle the disease.

Our medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is in Barcelona. He joins us live now -- good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol, from Barcelona.

Yes, President Clinton did arrive here yesterday. Certainly the charge that he led was for the youth and AIDS. That was the first event that he attended when he got here was actually an MTV event where he actually sat down with a bunch of youth aged 15 to 24 and talked to them about their questions, talked to them about AIDS, answered a lot of their questions, spent quite a bit of time with them.

Certainly he relayed some startling numbers. While 40 million infections exist in the world today, half of them, fully half of them are in kids aged 15 to 24. That is in the United States and around the world. And that number continues to grow.

The president also went and met with several other world leaders for a world leader forum where he was very, very vocal about the fact that it's not just apathy that's leading to these problems. It's also a lack of access to drugs, access to medications. In fact, this is what he had to say about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRES. WILLIAM CLINTON: Every country needs to have an agreement with the drug companies and then there needs to be a strategy to implement it. That's what my advice is. So all of the people watching this, they need to know what their country is supposed to pay and badger them to pay it and then badger them to have a plan and then badger them to implement it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: And what we're talking about specifically is $10 billion. That is what is expected to pay for all HIV treatment worldwide every year. Right now the Global Fund, which does support a lot of the money for that, is sitting at about $3 billion. Certainly the president was very vocal about needing more money, needing more access and trying to decrease the apathy among the youth, which has been a large problem, not only in the United States, but really around the world -- Carol.

COSTELLO: You certainly didn't hear that message from Bill Clinton when he was acting president. Why is he so vocal about it now?

GUPTA: I think that's a very fair question and certainly one that was posed to him, as well. And quite honestly, one of the things that he said was that if he had to do it all over again, he would have done things a little differently, not only with the amount of funding for AIDS and for HIV. He said that it would require about $2.5 billion at least from the United States, which, incidentally, is what the government pays in two months in the war in Afghanistan.

But he also said that such programs as needle exchange programs, which several scientific studies have shown to be effective in curbing the epidemic of AIDS, he said he would have reconsidered that, probably, as president, as well.

No question there was a lot of political pressures the other way that preventing him from doing that, he said, at that time. But it is something that clearly, when he was asked that question, he was sympathetic. And he said I probably would have done things differently -- Carol.

COSTELLO: There's so many disturbing things coming out of this conference. One that I heard was that some patients are actually taking medication and it's not working anymore.

GUPTA: That's right. That was one of the most disheartening things right at the top of the conference because we've always been relying on these very highly effective anti-retrovirals, these highly effective AIDS medications. Resistance is starting to develop and, in fact, up to 13 percent of people are having resistance to some of the most highly effective medications, and that certainly is concerning.

On a good news front, though, is that there are some new medications on the horizon. One of them called T20 is a new AIDS medication. It is being fast tracked by the FDA and hopefully is something that will be available soon. So while we're starting to see some resistance, we're also starting to see some new medications. Hopefully they'll be here in time -- Carol.

COSTELLO: You know, the conference ends today. How much good really did come out of this conference?

GUPTA: I think the most important message, really, that came out of the conference after five days was that there are good, existing preventive strategies. There are good existing treatment strategies.

The real problem that has developed over the last several years has been a growing apathy towards the disease and a growing complacency towards the medications. There isn't the cohesiveness towards AIDS. There isn't the cohesiveness towards HIV that there was in the mid-'90s and the early '90s. That needs to be reinvigorated. That's why all these world leaders are here. That's the message they're trying to send out.

We've got to use what we have, that's what we're hearing, and that's the message that former President Clinton as well as all the other world leaders were saying over the last several days.

COSTELLO: All right, thanks a lot.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta reporting live from Barcelona, Spain this morning.

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