Good drug policy is good AIDS policy. Drug users and sex workers benefit more from services than from beatings and prison. And as law enforcement officials committed to protecting the public, we can support public health.

Can you imagine being the parent whose child contracts one of these illnesses and you know halfway around the world children will survive and perhaps never even come in contact with one of these diseases because of modern medicine?

When I speak to Africans living with HIV, when I speak to African AIDS activists and when I speak to African leaders fighting AIDS, TB and malaria, they all express a profound gratitude for the global solidarity the world has expressed to them.

We're at risk of failing the poorest nations if we don't step up our efforts to address a health concern that's connected to the success of nearly every important socio-economic development milestone. I'm talking about neglected tropical diseases.

Safe and sustainable drinking water is essential for the health and economic well-being of the world's population, and yet 99 percent of the world's water supply is unsafe or unavailable to drink.

In America, we celebrate a child's fifth birthday with party hats and candles. In Africa, parents celebrate with a sigh of relief -- because it means their child is less at risk of dying from malaria.

You may not have heard of them grouped this way, but NCDs are diseases like cancer, diabetes, respiratory and cardiovascular illness. They are the kind of sick that... wait for it... causes two out of every three deaths worldwide.

The American people have led the fight against global HIV for nearly a decade. Africans will know who we are as a people and what we stand for if we continue to stand with them.

The WHO predicts that none of the health-related Millennium Development Goals that the international community had set itself will be met by 2015. Clearly no less than a paradigm shift will do.