The End of AIDS: the CNN Special Summit with President Bill Clinton

Saira and me with Paul Farmer

So last week Tina (the AMSA GAF) let us know about an opportunity to attend the CNN Presents Special Summit with Bill Clinton called The End of AIDS: A Global Summit (I'm not sure how long the website will be up, but for now it's here). It was being beld at the Mother Zion church in Harlem, and AMSA was given a bunch of seats in the audience. Since it was being held so close to where I live, I figured I couldn't pass up this opportunity. I skipped out of an Epi small group that I was supposed to run and went with a few other Sinai students. The show was set up as a conversation between Dr. Sanjay Gupta from CNN and Clinton, with thoughts from "panelists" interspersed in the conversation. The panelists included Dr. Helene Gayle of CARE, Bill Roedy of MTV International and the Global Media AIDS Alliance, activist and actor Richard Gere, Dr. Zeda Rosenberg of the International Campaign for Microbicides, Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners in Health, the Chairman of Pfizer drugs Hank McKinnell and the director of Doctors Without Borders. The focus of the program was the international span of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and it centered on a model of how to realize the goal of “a world without AIDS” in 20-30 years. It was very interesting to see how a show made for television is organized-- I haven't seen the final product on TV yet, but I'm really curious to see how they put it all together. At the end we had an opportunity to meet Paul Farmer and have our pictures taken (as you can see above). He was just the most friendly and approachable person... we're also going to be talking with him this coming Thursday. I am really excited.