Former US president Bill Clinton yesterday said Irish aid was saving lives all over the world as he signed a new agreement with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to fight HIV/Aids in Africa.
At Farmleigh House in Dublin, the Taoiseach announced that Ireland would provide €70 million under a renewal partnership with the Clinton Foundation that would focus on addressing HIV-Aids in two of the worst-affected countries in the world, Mozambique and Lesotho.
The new agreement makes Ireland the largest country donor to the Clinton Foundation HIV-Aids initiative.
Assured and polished, Mr Clinton spoke off the cuff for 10 minutes on the subject of fighting HIV/Aids in Africa, a cause to which he is clearly dedicated.
Despite looking drawn after a hectic round of fundraising events for his foundation in Ireland and the UK, his famous charisma nevertheless was still very much in evidence as he delivered the facts and figures with fluency and command.
Mr Clinton said that when the foundation began, only 200,000 people in the world were receiving treatment. Today there were 1.6 million. There was a long way to go as six million needed treatment but more would be treated this year.
"Nothing that I or my foundation have been able to do would have been possible without the involvement of the Irish Government," he said.
The Irish Government had encouraged others to take a chance on a new and different way of approaching HIV/Aids in the developing world, he said.
In the beginning only Ireland and Canada were willing to take a chance.
The funds were needed for long-term, low-cost treatment. They were now moving into paediatric Aids medicine.
In virtually every country they operated, even if they could bring the medicines tomorrow, there was place after place where there was no healthcare network, he said.
A second problem was that 90 per cent of HIV-positive people did not know they had the condition. So they were educating people in Mozambique and Lesothu to get tested.
There was also still a stigma attached.
"You should know, that Irish aid, the way it works, is saving lives all around the world. In these two countries, if it works the way we plan, they will have created a model that others will follow to save unbelievable numbers of lives in terms of HIV-Aids," Mr Clinton said.
The Taoiseach said that since the end of his US presidency, Mr Clinton had worked to transform Aids from a death sentence into a manageable disease.
The event was also attended by Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern and Minister of State for Development Co-Operation Conor Lenihan.