Feature story

World Bank on World AIDS Day: HIV as key development issue

01 December 2009

To mark World AIDS Day this year the World Bank is hosting an event in Washington DC which brings together a wide range of international partners and high-level guests to explore key issues in the challenge to HIV. Entitled Keeping the promise, Investing in the future: Linking HIV/AIDS, food security and maternal and child health, the gathering will examine AIDS as a central development issue, forging critical links between the epidemic and broader development goals.

To watch live click here

The event brings together the "big three" in AIDS funding - USG/PEPFAR (Under-Secretary for State, Hon. Jack Lew , and Ambassador Eric Goosby who heads PEPFAR), the Global Fund (Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director) and the World Bank (MD Ngozi  Okonjo-Iweala, Debrework Zewdie, and Julian Schweitzer). There will be short talks by WB President Bob Zoellick, Hon Jack Lew, Beldina Atieno – an HIV positive school teacher from Kenya, and Dr Jean (Bill) Pape who will discuss groundbreaking new data from his work in Haiti (with Cornell University) on the link between nutrition and health outcomes for people with HIV.  Then there will be a "Davos-style" conversation, moderated by Frank Sesno (former chief CNN correspondent, now Director, GWU School of Media and Public Affairs.).

It takes place this morning at World Bank headquarters in Washington from 9.00am to 10.45am local time and will be web cast live. The event includes the following speakers and panellists:

  1. The Honorable Jack Lew, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State
  2. Beldina Atieno, Teacher and mother living with HIV, Kenya
  3. Jean Pape, Director, GHESKIO, Haiti, and Professor of Medicine, Cornell University
  4. Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director, Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria
  5. Ambassador Eric Goosby, US Global AIDS Coordinator
  6. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Managing Director, World Bank
  7. Debrework Zewdie, Director, Global HIV/AIDS Program
  8. Robert Zoellick, President, World Bank Group (by video)