William Jefferson Clinton was elected President of the United States in 1992, and again in 1996 – the first Democratic president to be awarded a second term in six decades.

Aside from his many accomplishments in public office, President Clinton has an exceptional record of philanthropy and humanitarian activity. He established the William J Clinton Foundation to strengthen the capacity of people in the United States and throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence. To advance this mission, the Foundation is focused on four critical areas: health security, with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS; economic empowerment; leadership development and citizen service; and racial, ethnic and religious reconciliation.

The Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative aims to assist countries in implementing large-scale, integrated, care, treatment and prevention programmes that will turn the tide on the epidemic. It partners with countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia to develop operational business plans to scale-up care and treatment.

The Foundation works with individual governments and provides them with technical assistance, human and financial resources, and know-how from the sharing of the best practices across projects. The ultimate objective in each of these countries is to scale up public health systems to ensure broad access to high-quality care and treatment.

In April 2005, the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS initiative launched its new Paediatric and Rural initiatives to provide HIV/AIDS medications to children and persons in rural areas, those often forgotten in the battle against HIV/AIDS. Though AIDS care and treatment is now finally taking off in the developing world, the focus thus far has been mainly on adults and on people living in cities and towns.

After the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, President George W Bush asked President Clinton and President George H W Bush to lead a nationwide fundraising effort to help bring much-need relief to the victims of this disaster, and in March 2005, President Clinton was named Special Envoy for Tsunami Reconstruction by United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan.

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