Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today delivered the following remarks at the Global Action for Children’s first annual Children’s Champion Award Ceremony.  Dodd was honored for his leadership in passing “The Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008,” and for authoring “The Global Child Survival Act,” which would drastically reduce child and maternal mortality rates abroad. 

The full text of his remarks as prepared for delivery is below:

Let me first thank my fellow honorees – my colleague from California, Senator Boxer and Congresswomen McCollum and Lee. 

And of course, Senator Lugar.  No one brings more credibility to these issues than Dick Lugar, who I’ve served with on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for nearly three decades.  He is a friend and true champion. 

I also want to thank the Board of Global Action for Children – particularly your Executive Director, Jennifer Delaney, who has offered special leadership. 

We all get into public service or become deeply enmeshed in policy issues such as global health for the same reason:

To make a difference.

And is it ever needed.  Every single day, 27,000 children every day die from preventable diseases like pneumonia, diarrhea and complications during childbirth, many of which result from malnutrition.  Each year, some 4 million newborns die in the first 4 weeks of life.

That’s not just a tragedy – it’s a catastrophe. 

For the past five years, Global Action for Children has made that difference.  Since 2003, your work with our African and global advocacy partners has saved countless lives in Africa.  You have shown a remarkable ability to bring people together in common purpose when it comes to children. 

Your recent half-million dollar grant from the Gates Foundation to encourage African nations to dedicate 15 percent of their national budgets to health is yet one more example of your extraordinary work.

Certainly, the recent “PEPFAR” bill is but one indicator of not only the progress we can make for children’s health when we work together but also the message we can send. 

At a time when our Nation’s image overseas has been so badly damaged, our sustained commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS globally through this law has reminded the world that Americans are the compassionate, caring and generous people each of us knows we can be. 

Indeed, in the last five years, the United States has provided lifesaving drugs to some million-and-a-half people, including 2.7 million orphans and vulnerable children, and prevented an estimated 150,000 infant infections around the world. 

And we made some important changes to this initiative to improve the health of orphans and vulnerable children in the coming five years.  I am particularly proud of what we were able to accomplish in the area of prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. 

If we are going to take action to protect and promote the health of children, we have to protect and promote the health of mothers – it’s that simple.

Because of this bill, within five years we will reach 80% of pregnant women in those countries most affected by HIV/AIDS in which the U.S. is operating. 

We CAN prevent the transmission of HIV from mothers to their children.  We know how to do it.  Still, almost two-thirds of HIV-positive pregnant women don’t receive the medicines they need to prevent transmission to their babies.  That’s why the target we set will prove so crucial in coming years.

I am proud to report that the Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission Expert Panel we created in last year’s bill met last week.  My understanding is that the meeting was a big success and I look forward to receiving their recommendations.

The other area I was proud we were able to make a difference is treating HIV in children.  We have made great strides through the Ryan White CARE Act here in America.  But for the two-and-a-half million HIV-infected children around the world, long-term survival is mostly a dream.  Children represent close to 16% of HIV infections, but only 1 in 10 of those in treatment. 

We need to do better – and with the five-year target we set to ensure the number of children receiving care and treatment for HIV/AIDS reflects the infection rate, I’m hopeful we will.

Of course, there’s much more to do.  First, we have to fully fund these initiatives – and as someone who is spending day and night helping to fashion a response to the global economic crisis as Banking Chairman, I can tell you that it won’t be easy. 

I’m encouraged by President-elect Obama’s commitment to this issue and know that there are many Members in Congress deeply committed to this issue. 

Certainly, none of the improvements we made to PEPFAR would have been possible without my former colleague, Senator Gordon Smith.

Indeed, for all the divisions you have seen in Washington these past several years, the issues that bring us together today enjoy substantial bipartisan commitment.  Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, Tom Lantos, Henry Hyde – these individuals are synonymous with our commitment to the health and well-being of children across the world – and I would include President Bush in that group for his commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS globally.

Still, we all know there will be a temptation in the coming weeks and months to scale back our commitment abroad as we seek to address our challenges here at home.  That is why we will need every ounce of your energy and tenacity to push for full funding of these programs in this difficult economic climate.

Of course, HIV is only one threat to children across the world.  Even today, with all our challenges, our country can lift millions of children out of poverty in Africa and around the world and give those children a chance.

That’s why I’ve written “The Global Child Survival Act.”  We know that two-thirds of those 10 million children under the age of 5 who die could be saved with a $5 billion investment.  This bill would get us about a third of the way there – and it’s time we pass it. 

As I know all my friends at Global Action for Children recognize, all these issues come down to the same thing:

To our commitment – to not only what we expect of others, but what we expect of ourselves.  We have worked together to develop creative solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems – and we’ve made some remarkable progress. 

But I challenge you and all of us—and myself included—to think differently about how we can go even further, even in the face of a global economic crisis. 

For instance, Ready-To-Use Foods are being compared to penicillin for having shown promising results in the area of child malnutrition.  I look at the Clinton Global Initiative’s embrace of innovative ideas like distributing used eyeglasses to people in developing countries. 

It turns out that one of the biggest contributors to chronic poverty in many countries is that they can’t see – not because they’re sick, but because they don’t have glasses.

It’s my hope that we don’t suffer from a different kind of “vision problem” in the years to come. 

I’m the father of two young daughters.  Every day I am reminded how much potential there is for the world’s future.  But realizing that future starts with America doing its part for children across the world. 

It starts with creating a more stable, peaceful world in which opportunity isn’t limited by our geography but only by our imaginations and our desire to succeed. 

With your help, that’s the world I’ve sought to help create for our children in the Congress for the last three-and-a-half decades – both at home and abroad.

For all our challenges, I believe that future is within our grasp – and I know you do as well. 

Some may call that naïve.  But that vision—that shared vision of making a difference for our children—is what brings us together today.  It is what gets us up out of bed every morning. 

I won’t rest—and I know you won’t either—until we make that vision a reality for every child.  So, thank you again – for this honor, for this opportunity and, above all, for everything you do.

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