CNN to air three summits in collaboration with Clinton Global Initiative

CNN to air three summits in collaboration with Clinton Global Initiative

CNN

MUMBAI: CNN will produce three programmes with the Clinton Global Initiative to be broadcast on both CNN International and CNN/US in April, August and September of this year. The former US president Bill Clinton will be a featured guest at each of the hour-long events.

“These programs once again highlight CNN’s position as a global platform for news and debate. To pull together such important world players to discuss critical issues plays right to heart of CNN’s international audience,” said CNN International senior VP Rena Golden.

The end of Aids: A Global Summit with president Clinton is the first special event and will premiere in April. The program takes a unique perspective on the Aids crisis. Imagine for an hour that Aids has been eradicated. How did it happen? What role did government, drug companies and non-governmental organizations play in ending the Aids crisis? How will the unique public-private model employed at the Clinton Global Initiative be a factor in this eradication? CNN senior medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta will moderate a discussion that will include some of the world’s leading Aids experts and activists, informs an official statement.

Setting the scene for the debate, CNN Africa Correspondent Jeff Koinange travels to Botswana, where 40 percent of the population is infected with HIV/AIDS, and reports on how the government is testing for HIV. The end of Aids will also look at the most promising forms of treatment and the most effective government policies. The goal is to see how AIDS can be brought under control and eventually defeated.

In August, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who reported on last year’s devastating hurricanes along the US Gulf Coast, will moderate the second Global Summit. The focus of this forum will be on poverty – not only in third world countries, but also in the US– and what is being done to reduce it. Poverty is one of the four topic areas at the Clinton Global Initiative.

CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour will moderate the third and final Global Summit in September on the eve of the annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York. Participants of this forum will discuss various topics of global significance including climate change, mitigating religious conflicts, global public health and effective global governance.