Statement by Randall L. Tobias, Global AIDS Coordinator Nominee

As the President has made clear, we have the tools needed to confront this challenge. We are prepared to apply those tools in working with foreign governments, with people and communities living with HIV/AIDS, and with faith-based and community-based groups that have made this challenge their own, working each and every day to help their fellow citizens.

The tools to which I refer are set forth in the President’s 5-year $15 billion Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which requests a little over $2 billion in Fiscal Year 2004 and provides for steadily increasing expenditures over the next 4 years. Your overwhelming support in authorizing this visionary plan gives the President the ability to help transform despair into hope for millions of people. If confirmed, I will do my best to ensure this transformation takes place.

Let me outline a few of the grim statistics, how I plan to tackle them if I am confirmed as the President’s Global AIDS Coordinator, and the skills I believe I have to offer.

The Challenge

If 20 fully loaded jumbo passenger jets had crashed yesterday, today’s newspapers around the world would blare headlines reporting the overwhelming disasters. And yet that same number of people -- some 8,500 men, women, and children -- actually did die yesterday. But they died of AIDS, as part of a global tragedy that repeats itself each and every day. To many, it has simply become part of the background noise, so it does not make the front pages of the world’s papers. That’s something we must change, beginning quite simply with increased awareness.

The United Nations Joint Program on AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that during 2002, 3.1 million people died of AIDS, and five million were newly infected with the HIV virus, bringing the total number of people living with HIV/AIDS to 42 million. These are staggering statistics. Those who died last year represent a number equal to nearly half of the entire population of my home state of Indiana. Fourteen thousand people contract HIV each day, despite everything we know about the disease.

The projections are particularly grim for sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS is wiping out gains in health, education, and income. In the hardest-hit African countries, life expectancy has dropped from about 62 years to about 47 years. For a child born in 2003 in Botswana, life expectancy is only 36 years.

With the deaths of around seven million agricultural workers in Africa from AIDS, food insecurity is rising and national incomes are falling. The personal toll on the millions of orphans, spouses, parents, grandparents, and other loved ones left behind is horrific. Their pain and suffering are incalculable.

The threat is not limited to Africa. The Caribbean is already the second-most severely affected region in the world. Countries in Eastern Europe and Asia are also facing the threat of millions of new HIV infections.

How to Address the HIV/AIDS Pandemic

I am convinced the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, with its focused approach of treatment, prevention, and care, offers the best hope for the United States and the world to help nations most affected by the epidemic.

The President’s Emergency Plan lays out succinctly the program that I intend to follow. If confirmed, I will take steps to emulate the successful ABC approach to prevention through behavior change –

Abstain until marriage, Be faithful within marriage, or, when appropriate, consistent and correct use of
Condoms -- in priority order.

The President’s initiative on preventing mother and child HIV transmission, which uses scientifically and technically proven methods to reduce the transmission of HIV from mothers to their newborns, will also be an integral part of our strategy. And there are other closely related ways we can help, including working to insure the availability of adequate medical supplies and appropriate protocols and quality assurance to reduce the number of medical transmissions of the virus. Training health care workers at the local level, developing delivery systems and addressing the effect of HIV/AIDS on the fabric of societies at all levels -- individuals, families, communities, and nations -- are all key components.

This will require the help of other countries, international organizations, and the private sector. I will look to the community- and faith-based organizations that have been on the front lines in the fight against HIV/AIDS for so long for ongoing help and support. I intend to marshal all possible assistance from the many organizations and individuals in the U.S. and abroad that have generously committed their time and resources in the fight against this pandemic. Many corporations have developed effective delivery systems in Africa, and their insights will be invaluable.

Much recent attention has been appropriately directed to that aspect of the President’s Emergency Plan focused on the 14 countries in Africa and the Caribbean that are among the most severely affected by the AIDS pandemic. If confirmed, I will also ensure our continued efforts to stem the spread of AIDS in other countries. I am committed to building on and strengthening our existing bilateral programmatic efforts throughout the world -- currently in some 75 countries and nine regional programs -- and to continued diplomatic outreach on HIV/AIDS.

In addition to our bilateral efforts, the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria will also continue to play a vital role in our overall efforts, and I look forward to accepting my responsibilities for providing coordination and leadership to the Global Fund activities of the United States Government. It will be of paramount importance to achieving the President’s goals of fighting these three diseases to work closely with the Global Fund Chairman, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson, and other Global Fund participants from around the world, with the leaders of UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and other international organizations to coordinate and optimize our various efforts.

If confirmed, I look forward to coordinating the activities of the many Federal agencies that have committed themselves to this goal and to making sure that, at the end of the day, we can be accountable to the Congress, the President, and the U.S. taxpayers for our careful and effective stewardship of these funds. I welcome the generous expressions of support and cooperation I’ve already received from the leaders of these activities in all parts of our government. While I expect to look for every appropriate opportunity to approach these challenges in new and different ways, I do not intend to reinvent the wheel or create large new bureaucratic structures. I intend to listen to leaders and to advocates, and to those working in the field, to gain their perspectives about what works and what doesn’t. My aim is to get everyone moving in one direction with one purpose in mind -- preventing more deaths and infections, providing treatment and care -- in short, offering both healing and hope.

Skills I Offer

During my nearly four decades in the corporate world, I am proud to have served as Vice Chairman of AT&T and then as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Eli Lilly and Company. Both were extraordinary opportunities for leadership and service. The global reach and impact of the products and services of both of these companies have helped to transform the lives of hundreds of millions of people, here in the United States and around the world. So it was with a great sense of satisfaction that I stepped down from my role as a CEO, proud of what had been achieved, but ready to move on to a number of other more personal activities that I had long anticipated embracing at this point in my life.

The call to take on this assignment was unsolicited and totally unexpected, but I understand what’s at stake. It is clear to me that the relevance of all of my prior assignments pales in comparison to the challenge and the importance of fighting the global scourge of AIDS. I’m extremely grateful to have been offered the chance to contribute to this effort. If I am confirmed, it is my view that the most significant days of my career are in fact still ahead. This will be the most important assignment of my life.

To undertake this challenge requires attributes that I believe I can bring to the task at hand -- passion, vision, a set of global experiences, management and leadership skills, and a strong motivation to make a difference. That is why I accepted this enormous challenge and that is why I am here today. It is an honor and a privilege to be given the unprecedented opportunity to help deliver on the promise of the President’s Emergency Plan -- to help reverse the global spread of AIDS. I can think of nothing more important to be doing with my life in the days ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to be a part of demonstrating to the world community an important aspect of what makes this country great -- the generosity and the compassion of the American people. will be pleased to respond to any questions you might have.