To celebrate World AIDS Day, which takes place every year on December 1, FGFJ co-organized a seminar on the global fight against AIDS in collaboration with the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO). The main feature of the seminar was former head of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and current director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Peter Piot, whose new book No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses was published in May 2012. Dr. Piot talked about the need for both personal and collective responsibility in fighting AIDS and challenged the audience of more than 150 people to find a role that they can each play in the fight against this disease that touches everyone around the world in one way or another. He warned that, even though incredible achievements have been made in preventing new infections and prolonging the lives of those who are infected, scaling back the response now would not only result in the unnecessary loss of many lives but would also risk wiping out the gains that have resulted so far from the investments the world has put into fighting this disease. As a major supporter of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, it is in Japan’s interest to make sure that the unprecedented investments that have been made so far have not been made in vain.
Acknowledging that it will likely be impossible to sustain current levels of funding for AIDS, Dr. Piot stressed the need for a more strategic approach to investing in the fight against AIDS, suggesting that prevention and testing efforts be targeted at the most-at-risk populations and that low-cost but effective innovative approaches to preventing transmission of HIV be explored and deployed. He also highlighted the need to create more synergies between AIDS-related activities and other health sector interventions, given the chronic nature of AIDS treatment in the age of widespread antiretroviral (ARV) treatment and the growing burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) around the world. As Japan prepares to host the Fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in June 2013, Dr. Piot encouraged the audience members to use the opportunity to make sure that the voices of those at the front lines of the fight against HIV/AIDS are heard and heeded.
Video footage of the full seminar in Japanese and English, including presentations from IDE-JETRO and the World Bank and an interactive session with Dr. Piot, IDE-JETRO’s Katsumi Hirano, and the FGFJ’s Ken Shibusawa, can be streamed on this page below.
Agenda
Interviewer Tomoko Omura, Senior Producer, NHK World TV
| Opening Ken Shibusawa, President and CEO, Japan Center for International Exchange |
| Lecture: No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses
Peter Piot, Director, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; former Executive Director, UNAIDS; Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize Laureate |
| Panel Discussion: How Can Japan Fight AIDS as It Stands in the Way of Its Foreign Investment?
Moderator Katsumi Hirano, Chief Senior Researcher, Area Studies Center, Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO) Presentations “HIV/AIDS and Its Impacts on Labor Markets” Damien de Walque, Senior Economist, Development Research Group (DECRG), World Bank“ IDE-JETRO TICAD Project: Toyota Motors South Africa’s AIDS Workplace Program” Seiro Ito, Director, Microeconomic Analysis Studies Group, Development Studies Center, IDE-JETRO |
| Interactive Session Pieter Piot, Ken Shibusawa, Katsumi Hirano |
| Reception |
Speakers
Peter Piot
Director, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; former Executive Director, UNAIDS; Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize Laureate
Professor Baron Peter Piot is the director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a professor of global health. In 2009-2010 he was the director of the Institute for Global Health at Imperial College, London. He was the founding executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and under secretary-general of the United Nations from 1995 until 2008, before which he was an associate director of the Global Programme on AIDS at the World Health Organization.
Professor Piot co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976 and led multiple research projects on AIDS, women’s health, and public health in Africa. He was a professor of microbiology at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp; the Free University of Brussels; and the University of Nairobi. He was also a senior fellow at the University of Washington, a scholar-in-residence at the Ford Foundation, and a senior fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He held the 2009 chair in “Knowledge against Poverty” at the College de France in Paris.
He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Academie Nationale de Medicine of France, and the Royal Academy of Medicine in his native Belgium, as well as a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008-2011, he was the president of the King Baudouin Foundation and was knighted as a baron in 1995. In March 2013 he was awarded the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize by the Japanese government for his work on infectious diseases in Africa. He has published over 500 scientific articles and 16 books, including his recent memoirs, No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses.
Tomoko Omura
Senior Producer, NHK World TV
Tomoko Omura is senior producer in the News and Production Division of Japan Broadcasting Corporation’s (NHK) International Planning and Broadcasting Department and senior producer of NHK World TV’s NEWSLINE. Since joining NHK in 1984, she has served as a reporter in the News Department’s Current Affairs Division, an anchor for GTV’s News Today, reporter for NHK’s Yokohama Bureau, reporter and programming director in the News Department’s BS News 23, senior producer of NHK World TV’s Japan this Week, anchor for News Today Asia, anchor and chief editor of Insight & Foresight, and editor-in-chief of NHK’s weekly magazine STERA. She has participated as a bilingual mistress of ceremonies for events during the Fourth Tokyo Conference on African Development in May 2008 and the Hokkaido Toyako G8 Summit in July 2008. She has a degree in comparative culture from Sophia University’s Foreign Language Department.
Katsumi Hirano
Chief Senior Researcher, Area Studies Center, Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO)
Katsumi Hirano is chief senior researcher in the Area Studies Center of the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO). He has been engaged in African studies and development studies for more than 30 years. Dr. Hirano earned an MA in economics from Waseda University and a PhD in global studies from Doshisha University. He Joined IDE in 1991 after working as a special assistant in the embassy of Japan in Zimbabwe and as a program officer in the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. He has also been a visiting research fellow at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa (1993-1995); executive director of the JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization) Johannesburg Office (2004-2007); and director general of the Area Studies Center, IDE-JETRO (2008-2012). He has published many books on African affairs including one in English, Japan and South Africa in a Globalising World: A Distant Mirror, which he co-edited with Chris Alden (Ashgate: UK, 2003). He is also a board member of the Japan Consortium of Area Studies (JCAS) and the Sasakawa Africa Association and received the Okita Saburo Memorial Prize in 2003.
Damien de Walque
Senior Economist, Development Research Group (DECRG), World Bank
Damien de Walque is a senior economist in the Development Research Group (Human Development and Public Services Team) at the World Bank. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 2003. His research interests include health and education and the interactions between them. His current work is focused on evaluating the impact of financial incentives on health and education outcomes, and he is working on evaluating the impact of HIV/AIDS interventions and policies in several African countries. He is leading two evaluations of the impact of short-term financial incentives on the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs): individuals who test negatively for a set of STIs receive regular cash payment in Tanzania, while in Lesotho they receive lottery tickets. His work also focuses on evaluating the education and health outcomes of more traditional conditional cash transfers linked to school attendance and health center visits: in Burkina Faso, he compares conditional and unconditional cash transfers and investigates the role played by the recipients’ gender. On the supply side of health services, he works on the impact evaluation of results-based financing in the health sector in several African countries and Tajikistan. He is also editing a book on risky behaviors for health in the developing world.
Seiro Ito
Director, Microeconomic Analysis Studies Group, Development Studies Center, IDE-JETRO
Seiro Ito is the director of the Microeconomics Studies Group atIDE-JETRO. He joined IDE in 1991 before going on to receive his PhD in economics from Brown University in 2006. He specializes in development economics, applied microeconomics, impact evaluation, and applied time series analysis. His research involves mostly household issues, including child labor, child learning and progression, intra-household decision making, micro insurance, microfinance for the ultra poor, migration, anemia prevention, HIV/AIDS, unemployment in South African townships, and irrigation impacts on agricultural households. He combines field observations (understanding needs and acquiring intuitions), economic theories (understanding mechanisms), field surveys and experiments (data collection), econometrics (hypothesis testing), and computer programming (refinements on hypothesis testing) in research to improve policies in developing countries. He has given presentations at the American Economic Association and the Econometric Society, among others. Recent publications include “How Does Credit Access Affect Children’s Time Allocation? Evidence from Rural India” in the Journal of Globalization and Development (forthcoming), “What (Who) Has Turned the Economy into This? Unemployment Problem” in IDE World Trend (in Japanese, forthcoming), and “Ramadan School Holidays as a Natural Experiment: Impacts of Seasonality on School Dropout in Bangladesh,” IDE Discussion Paper Series 295.
Ken Shibusawa
President and CEO, Japan Center for International Exchange
Ken Shibusawa was appointed president and CEO of the Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE) and director of the Friends of the Global Fund, Japan (FGFJ), in 2012. He also serves as chairman of Commons Asset Management, which he co-founded in 2008. Considered one of Japan’s new generation of young business leaders, Mr. Shibusawa’s career has spanned the nonprofit and business worlds. After spending his childhood in the United States, graduating from the University of Texas, and obtaining an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles, he worked for a number of financial institutions in Japan and the United States, including JP Morgan Tokyo, Goldman Sachs Japan, and Moore Capital Management. Then in 2001, he launched Shibusawa & Co., an alternative investment advisory firm. He is a director of Keizai Doyukai (Japan Association of Corporate Executives), where he serves as vice chairman of the Committee on National Security. He has been closely involved in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors throughout his career, lecturing and writing about corporate social responsibility and pioneering several innovative initiatives to promote social entrepreneurship and channel funding to nonprofit organizations. Mr. Shibusawa has written a number of books on how to align the profit motive with the broader aim of contributing to the societal good.
Organizers
Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization (IDE-JETRO) |
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The Institute of Developing Economies (IDE) aims to make intellectual contributions to the world as a leading center of social-science research on developing regions. We accumulate locally-grounded knowledge on these areas, clarify the conditions and issues they are facing, and disseminate a better understanding of these areas both domestically and abroad. These activities provide an intellectual foundation to facilitate cooperation between Japan and the international community for addressing development issues.
Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE) |
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Founded in 1970, the Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE) is one of the few independent nongovernmental organizations in the field of international affairs in Japan. It operates a wide range of programs to promote dialogue and cooperation among leaders from different sectors of society in Japan and around the world.
The Friends of the Global Fund, Japan (FGFJ) |
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The Friends of the Global Fund, Japan (FGFJ), is a private support group that works to promote a greater understanding of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; encourage Japan to expand its role in the battle against communicable diseases; and build cooperation between Japan and other East Asian countries in this shared struggle. The FGFJ draws upon participation from diverse sectors of Japanese society, including the fields of government and politics, business, academia, labor, and the nonprofit sphere.
Video
World AIDS Day Lecture: “No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses”
Panel Discussion: “How Can Japan Fight AIDS as It Stands in the Way of Its Foreign Investment?”
Interactive Session: An Interview with Peter Piot and Katsumi Hirano
