Press Release: President Clinton to Visit Kunming to Highlight Progress of Yunnan HIV/AIDS Care and Treatment
Former President Bill Clinton visited the Yunnan CDC and the Kunming No. 3 Peoples’ Hospital to highlight the progress of the Yunnan-Clinton Foundation Cooperation for HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control supporting HIV/AIDS care and treatment programs among injection drug users and other highly affected populations in Yunnan Province. This program has helped start approximately 70 patients on treatment in the first 80 days of operation, and has trained nearly 200 clinical, laboratory, and community health staff. Following the laboratory tour, hospital visit, and patient meetings, President Clinton and Yunnan Government officials joined people living with HIV/AIDS for dinner and discussion.
Launched June 20, 2005 with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Yunnan and the Clinton Foundation, this three-year cooperative program aims to deliver high-quality care and treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS in Dali, Geijiu, Kaiyuan, and Lincang, followed by other sites in subsequent years. Under this agreement, the Clinton Foundation (CF) will be training and providing other support to clinicians, laboratory personnel, and community health workers in Yunnan to start wide-scale treatment for a primarily injection drug using population as part of a comprehensive program that Yunnan Bureau of Health will implement.
This cooperation marks the first time that ARV treatment has been started on a broad scale for a largely injecting drug user HIV population. One of the agreement’s targets is to treat 3000 by the end of the 3rd year of the program by building the capacity of clinicians and the health infrastructure support ARV treatment. In addition, the program involves the first provincial pilot program for viral load testing to help prevent the development of drug resistance.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE CLINTON FOUNDATION HIV/AIDS INITIATIVECHINA PROGRAM
- On April 29, 2004, CHAI signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Chinese Ministry of Health, under whose direction CHAI is collaborating with the Chinese Center for Disease Control (CCDC) and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS). This event marked the first MOU the Ministry of Health has ever signed with an NGO.
- In August 2004, Clinton Foundation helped Chinese CDC develop the first China Free Anti-Retroviral Therapy Manual, which was approved in January 2005.
- On November 18, 2004, Clinton Foundation helped establish the Sino-US Lixin HIV/AIDS Physician Training Center, which is a joint collaboration of China CDC, Anhui Province, U.S. CDC-GAP and Clinton Foundation. This Center is the first training center for front-line physicians in highly-affected resource-limited settings in China.
- Wide-scale pediatric treatment began for the first time as a result of the pediatric drugs and technical assistance donated by the Clinton Foundation under the MOU signed February 23, 2005 between William J. Clinton, former President of the United States of America and Mr. Gao Qiang, Minister of Ministry of Health (MoH), People’s Republic of China.
- On February 23, 2005, Clinton Foundation announced a CF-MOH HIV/AIDS Service Fellowship to encourage physicians to treat HIV/AIDS patients in underserved areas.
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