Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, by using their foundation to fight HIV/AIDS, show their understanding that because the pandemic is a unique global crisis it needs global partnerships to defeat it, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.
He was congratulating the couple on being selected as the recipients tonight of the 2003 Bishop John T. Walker Humanitarian Award from Africare, a 33-year-old Washington, D.C.-based, Africa-focused aid organization founded by former Peace Corps official C. Payne Lucas. The late Bishop Walker was the long-time chairman of Africare and the first African-American Episcopalian bishop of Washington.
"Bill and Melinda Gates have helped set new standards in philanthropy and partnerships," Mr. Annan said in a message to the award dinner. "Time and again, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has demonstrated its visionary approach to the use of wealth for the greatest public good, in areas from education to public health in this country and the developing world.
"Nowhere has this approach been more important than in the global fight against HIV/AIDS - an issue which I have made my personal priority."
The leadership they have contributed to that fight "not only serves as a powerful example to other donors and to governments, in its own right, it is also helping to save millions of lives."
Previous award recipients included former South African President Nelson Mandela, former South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, lawyer-activist Sargent Shriver and entertainer-activist Harry Belafonte.