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   Mr. MOYNIHAN. On August 19, 2000, President Clinton signed into law bipartisan legislation that pledges more than $400 million to fight AIDS and other infectious diseases in Africa and around the world.

   There are few greater crises that face us today than the AIDS pandemic. Alarming statistics are reported from around the globe. In Africa, more than 13 million people have died from AIDS, and an estimated 24.5 million are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus HIV. More than 1 in 3 adults in Botswana are HIV-positive. Burma and Cambodia have recently had the sharpest increases in the rate of infection. In Haiti, more than 1 in 20 adults are infected.

   The XIII International AIDS Conference in South Africa was defined by the fact that 90 percent of those infected with HIV do not have the means to pay for the drugs to treat it. The epidemic is fueled by poverty, poor health, illiteracy, malnutrition, and gender bias. These are the same problems that developing nations have struggled with for many years. But even more urgency becomes warranted as these factors contribute to the exponential growth of an epidemic.

   According to AIDS expert Peter Godwin, an epidemic requires specific responses in three areas: long-term protection of vulnerable populations; short-term relief and rehabilitation of those in crisis; and the strengthening

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   The Senate's passage of this bill is remarkable. But our work has just begun. According to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, Asia has reached a critical point in the development of the AIDS epidemic. Though India has a relatively low infection rate, it has more than four million cases and is now the nation with the largest number of HIV cases in the world. In Africa, the U.N. has predicted that half of all 15-year-olds in the African countries worst affected by AIDS will eventually die of the disease, even if the rates of infection drop substantially in the next few years. Sandra Thurman, the director of the Clinton administration's anti-AIDS effort, put it best: ``We are at the beginning of a pandemic, not the middle, not the end.''

   On February 3, Mr. FEINGOLD and I introduced S. 2032, the Mother-to-Child HIV Prevention Act of 2000. This bill has been included in this assistance package and will authorize $25 million to bolster intervention programs, which include voluntary counseling and testing, antiretroviral drugs, replacement feeding, and other strategies.

   At the beginning of this year, a score of bills were introduced by my colleagues in this body. Some proposals were more ambitious than others. No single proposal would have been a complete solution. Neither is the relief package before us. But each was an approach that did not require waiting for a cure. And each could make a difference. I hope this momentum will not face--but instead, grow internationally and exponentially--and that we will not become fatigued by this most formidable challenge.

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