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Gore's initiative serves to:

contain the AIDS pandemic on the international level;

provide home and community-based care;

offer care for children orphaned by AIDS; and

strengthen prevention and treatment by supporting

infrastructure, disease surveillance, and capacity development.

I strongly believe that it is important for us to critically examine the United States' role in combating this global epidemic. In doing so, I look forward to hearing the testimony from the witnesses

assembled, and to discover the best ways to implement initiatives

that would strengthen the fight against AIDS worldwide.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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Mr. MICA. I am now pleased to recognize another member of our panel and subcommittee, and also the chairman of our Committee on International Relations.

As the gentleman from California, Mr. Lantos, pointed out, I think this is the second congressional hearing. He conducted the first congressional hearing on this issue, so I am pleased to recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr. Gilman.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you. I want to commend you for conducting this hearing on such a critical issue facing not only nations in Africa, but throughout the world and our own Nation as well, and to try to find the best way to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

We still have a long way to go. I am pleased that we heard recently this week, as a matter of fact, that there will be more funds from the administration contributed to this issue, but we have to encourage the international community to work together on this problem. It is a problem that has affected too many lives for too long. We are beginning to see some scientific and medical improvements. Of course, we still have a long way to go it in that direction. So I commend you for bringing this again to the attention of the Congress. I commend our panelists who are here today, our Members of Congress, Mr. Berry, Mr. Jackson. It is good to have Ms. Nkhoma here from Malawi. We look forward to having the additional panelists from our administration, and we all look forward to working together to see what we can evolve by way of congressional assistance to combat this problem.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman.

I would like to now turn to our panel, they have been waiting most patiently. We have two distinguished Members of the House of Representatives who have joined us today and asked to provide testimony: First, the Honorable Jesse Jackson, Jr., from Illinois, and he is joined by Marion Berry of Arkansas.

Also on the panel, we are pleased to introduce Chatinka Nkhoma, a Malawi citizen, who will also testify.

I might say, just as a preface, that this is an investigations and oversight subcommittee of Congress. We do not swear in other Members of Congress, but we ask all others who testify to affirm and swear that their testimony is truthful.

With that, Ms. Nkhoma, would you stand and be sworn, please? Raise your right hand.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. MICA. Thank you.

The other ground rule we have is that we try to limit our statements to 5 minutes, and we will be very glad to enter into the record lengthy additional statements or documents that might refer to your testimony.

With those comments, let me welcome our two Members and recognize first in the order of seniority our colleague Mr. Jackson from Illinois. You are recognized and welcomed, sir.

STATEMENT OF HON. JESSE JACKSON, JR., A REPRESENTA-
TIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS
Mr. JACKSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Chairman Mica, Rank-
ing Member Mrs. Mink. I want to thank you for this opportunity

to address the subcommittee during today's hearings on the U.S. role in combating the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the policies and programs that are being pursued internationally.

I want to comment just briefly on the gentlewoman from Washington's concern regarding the Frelinghuysen language. I offered an alternative in the foreign operations subcommittee hearing to the Frelinghuysen language. It was accepted by the committee, and Mr. Frelinghuysen committed to me in full committee that he will not offer it, so we have reversed the Frelinghuysen language, and he has been most accommodating and understanding.

As you are surely aware, Mr. Chairman, HIV/AIDS are rampaging throughout sub-Saharan Africa. While sub-Saharan nations comprise only 10 percent of the world's population, they are bearing the tragic burden of 70 percent of the world's new AIDS cases. The World Health Organization reports that of the 14 million people who have died of AIDS to date, 12 million have come from this region. In the hardest hit countries, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Swaziland, infection rates in the 15-to-49 age group are an astonishing 25 percent. In tourist areas, such as Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, the rates are even higher, 40 percent. Please allow me to share an additional key finding from the Report on the Presidential Mission on Children Orphaned by AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa released by the White House on Monday.

Deaths resulting from AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa will soon surpass the 20 million people in Europe who died in the plague of 1347. Over the next decade, AIDS will kill more people in sub-Saharan Africa than the total number of casualties in all wars in the 20th century. Each day 5,500 in the region die of AIDS-related causes. By 2005, the daily death toll will reach 13,000. There are nearly 600,000 new infections each year among African babies; 9 of every 10 infants infected with HIV at birth or through breastfeeding live in sub-Saharan Africa.

In nine sub-Saharan countries, from one-fifth to one-third of children will lose one or both parents to AIDS this year. In Lusaka, Zambia, 100,000 children are estimated to be living on the streets, most of them orphaned by AIDS. By next year, 1 million children in Zambia, or one out of three, will have lost one or both parents. In large part, as a result of AIDS, infant mortality will double, while child mortality will triple over the next decade in many areas of sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS has reduced life expectancy in Zambia to 37 years from 56. In the next few years, AIDS will reduce life expectancy in South Africa by one-third, from 60 years, to 40.

Over the next 20 years, AIDS is estimated to reduce by onefourth the economies of sub-Saharan Africa. In Malawi and Zambia, 30 percent of teachers are HIV-positive. In Zambia, 1,500 teachers died of AIDS-related causes in 1998 alone.

By 2005, AIDS deaths in Asia will mirror those in Africa. Asia will account for one out of every four infections worldwide by the end of the year. In India, rates of infection are expected to double every 14 months.

Finally, one in seven South Africans has HIV/AIDS, one in seven Kenyans, one in four people in Zimbabwe. United States Surgeon General David Satcher has likened the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa to the plague which decimated Europe in the 14th century.

Existing treatments which enable many people with HIV/AIDS in the United States and elsewhere to survive are unavailable to all but a few people in Africa. Lifesaving HIV/AIDS drug cocktails cost about $12,000 a year in many African countries, far out of reach of all but a handful of the growing African population of people with HIV/AIDS. Mr. Chairman, per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa for 750 million people is $500 per year, while the drug cocktails are $12,000 a year.

By comparison, Mr. Chairman, the top three officers in Microsoft have personal assets valued at $140 billion; 43 sub-Saharan Africa countries and 600 million people.

Highlighting the difficulty of AIDS education, there are 1,500 sub-Saharan languages. Even myth, superstition, and rumor hamper the efforts. Most recently in Durbin, South Africa, and I quote from a newspaper article issued in a CNN bulletin,

The rolling hills and fertile valleys in the province of 8.5 million have spawned a myth of a terrible folk cure, a story that says having sex with a virgin will rid sufferers of the disease. The widespread belief has parents, children, doctors and courts struggling with a wave of rapes, frequently of young girls.

There is a crying need to make life-saving drugs and education more affordable and available, and quickly. South Africa is seeking to lower prices through the use of compulsory licensing and parallel import policies. Both of these measures are consistent with South Africa's obligations under the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property, or TRIPS.

Compulsory licensing would permit generic production of on-patent drugs with reasonable royalties paid to the patent owner. Market competition as a result of compulsory licensing would likely lower pharmaceutical prices by 75 percent or more. Parallel imports would enable the government to shop on the world market for low-priced pharmaceuticals.

Other countries are watching South Africa; if South African policies result in lower drug prices and help alleviate the AIDS epidemic, other African countries are likely to follow with similar lifesaving measures.

Mr. Chairman, I want to ask unanimous consent that all of my remarks be entered into the record, but I do want to close on this brief point.

The chairman in his opening statement said it is a trade issue. The Congress continues to send mixed signals regarding the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. Last week Congress passed by voice vote an amendment, which expresses a sense that addressing the HIV/ AIDS crisis should be a central component of America's foreign policy with respect to sub-Saharan Africa. It expresses the sense of Congress that significant progress needs to be made in preventing and treating HIV/AIDS before we can expect to sustain à mutually beneficial trade relationship with sub-Saharan countries.

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However, the Committee on Rules defeated a substantive amendment which I offered would have resolved this problem and put an end to the misguided United States policy of bullying South Africa. It would prevent the United States Trade Representative or other agencies from interfering with African countries' efforts to make HIV/AIDS and other medicines available to the sick so long as their intellectual property rules comply with TRIPS.

The Committee on Rules said my AIDS amendment did not belong in a trade bill. However, a sense of Congress resolution did belong in a trade bill. Even the chairman in his opening statement acknowledged that this issue is a trade issue.

Last week, with the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act amendment on HIV/AIDS, the House said its heart was in the right place on this issue. But yesterday Bernie Sanders offered an amendment to the State Department authorization bill that would have put our heart and our policy in the same place, but it was overwhelmingly defeated 307 to 117.

The Bible does not let us get away with mere good intentions. It requires good law, good policy, and money for implementation. The Bible has a different way and a more objective standard. It says, "Where your treasury is, there will your heart be also," Matthew 6:21.

If Congress is serious about addressing these problems, we have the power to do so. We can either be politically correct and side with pharmaceutical companies, or be morally correct and side with the millions of afflicted people in South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and beyond sub-Saharan Africa. The choice is ours.

Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to address the subcommittee. I look forward to working with Members on these critical issues.

Mr. MICA. Thank you, and without objection, your entire statement will be made part of the record.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Jesse Jackson, Jr., follows:]

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