HHS Secretary Thompson Discusses Trip to Africa on CNN’s ‘Inside Politics’
HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson in an interview on CNN's "Inside Politics" on Wednesday discussed the Bush administration's global AIDS initiative and his recent trip to several African countries to examine projects aimed at fighting HIV/AIDS (Woodruff, "Inside Politics," CNN, 12/10). Thompson toured four African nations with a U.S. delegation of more than 100 lawmakers, business leaders and religious groups, including Randall Tobias, head of the new State Department Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator, and Richard Holbrooke, president of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The delegation also included UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot, Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Executive Director Richard Feachem, CDC Director Julie Gerberding, NIH Director Elias Zerhouni and NIAID Director Anthony Fauci (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 12/8). Thompson said, "It was a very revealing trip in which we learned a great deal. But we found for the first time ... there's a degree of hope and optimism that wasn't there previously. People that I talked to were very appreciative of what President Bush is doing with his initiative. They need the dollars. They need the programs" ("Inside Politics," CNN, 12/10). The complete transcript of the program is available online.
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