Clinton lauds Irish nurse as he urges action on African Aids
Wednesday May 25 2005
More than 400 people sat in rapt silence as the former US president recalled the death of a personal friend from Aids and pointed out that a lack of medical care has led to the deaths of millions of people in Africa from the rapidly spreading disease.
He commended the work of Irish nurse Mary Donohoe who set up 'The Rose Project' in 2003 after her visit to a community-based HIV and Aids programme in Kenya run by Franciscan missionaries.
He said that there was no point in vast amounts of money being available to combat the disease in Africa unless organisations such as 'The Rose Project' were in place to train people and organise the most effective ways of using the resources.
All 40 tables at the breakfast gathering at the Berkeley Court Hotel in Dublin were snapped up at €5,000 each to hear Mr Clinton praise the Irish group's work against the deadly disease.
Mr Clinton said he and his wife Hillary had several friends who had died of Aids, but at least sufferers in America and other Western countries had access to life-saving anti-retroviral drugs.
The vast majority of the 40m people worldwide who are HIV Positive have absolutely no access to such drugs and are in peril of death, while the percentage of people with access to such drugs was "pathetically small", he said.
"Half a million children under the age of 12 died of Aids last year. Yet only 25,000 children are getting the paediatric medicine they need to fight the disease," he said.
Urging people to support 'The Rose Project' and other anti-Aids efforts, he declared: "We could fix this."
Mr Clinton was introduced to the audience by businessman Denis O'Brien. Mary Donohoe earlier singled out Mr O'Brien for his invaluable help for the project's work.
Ms Donohoe welcomed the former president and spoke of her personal experience in seeking to nurse Aids victims in Kenya while rats scurried around her feet in their small huts.
Her charity was seeking to bring food, medicine and medical care to Aids-hit families.
Meanwhile, DUP leader unleashed a tirade against Mr Clinton, accusing him of trying to force the party into power-sharing with Sinn Fein.
The North Antrim MP launched a savage broadside after Mr Clinton, speaking in Dublin earlier this week, challenged Mr Paisley's claim that the Good Friday Agreement was dead.
Mr Paisley said: "The discredited ex-president of the United States of America, Bill Clinton, simply revealed his unmitigated cheek in going to a country that wants to destroy Ulster's place in the United Kingdom and then lectures us that our democratic expression of our own future must be set aside to conform to the will of the country that claims supremacy over it."
- Alan O'Keeffe
