Internationally-renowned AIDS activist Dr. Jim Kim rejected the claim that the world lacks the financial resources to treat AIDS-afflicted Africans, arguing instead on Friday that it is a matter of public awareness and political will.

Raising funds for AIDS treatment has not been easy, Kim told a packed Kresge Auditorium in a lecture entitled “Facing AIDS: Why We Can’t Wait.” With his peers in the medical field years ago telling him “what can’t be done,” he said it was as if “35 million people in Africa were being told to die.”

But Kim refused to listen to those critics. While at the World Health Organization, he created the “3 by 5” initiative, with the unheard-of goal of treating three million HIV-infected people in developing nations by the year 2005. Against enormous odds, Kim said that he would continue to fight for funding, describing the problem as a lack of a public outcry.

“We spend $2 billion per week in Iraq,” he said. “No one ever convinced me that there is not enough money to provide health care for everyone in the planet. It’s just a matter of political will.”

The address began with junior Jonny Dorsey, co-founder and executive director of FACE AIDS, introducing Kim as one of his personal heroes. Dorsey’s organization, which co-sponsored Friday’s talk, now has over a hundred college chapters devoted to generating awareness about AIDS in Africa. FACE AIDS also kicked off a $1 million fundraising effort last month — money that will go to Partners in Health (PIH), an assistance group that works on the ground in Africa, which Kim co-founded in 1987.

Many students were already familiar with Kim and PIH, both featured in Tracy Kidder’s bestseller “Mountains Beyond Mountains” — required reading for incoming freshmen this summer.

“It was really powerful to get physical proof that the book is nowhere near fiction,” said sophomore Ellen Truxaw.

Kim pointed to Lesotho as a sobering picture of the disease’s impact. Life expectancy has decreased by 20 years, he said, and at times there has been an average gap of just 25 days between an AIDS diagnosis and death.

“We have not seen life expectancy drops like this since the Black Plague,” Kim said.

But while the death and misery AIDS wreaks is tough to take in, he said he still finds reasons to be optimistic.

“Today, 1.7 million people are on treatment,” Kim said. “Most would say this never would have been possible.”

Kim is currently the chief of the Social Medicine Department at Harvard Medical School, and he said he will continue to use that position to promote innovation, support scholarship, train and nurture a new cadre of global health leaders and cultivate communities of practice by utilizing the Internet.

Kim’s speech kicked off a weekend-long FACE AIDS forum designed to bring college activists from around the country together to brainstorm ways to raise awareness and encourage students to create FACE AIDS chapters at other campuses.

Saturday morning’s program included two panels. The first, entitled “America’s Response to AIDS in the 20th Century,” featured a discussion about America’s reaction to the global AIDS epidemic, as well as the specific responses from American corporations and religious institutions. While there were considerably fewer students in attendance at the discussions, as compared to Kim’s address, students said they enjoyed the panel.

The second panel, “The Emergence of Treatment Programs in Resource-Poor Settings,” focused on the recent shift towards treatment, especially as a result of PIH’s successful work in Haiti.

Saturday’s programming also included workshops on issues involving AIDS’ relationship with women, youth, the media and HIV care.

On Saturday, Dr. Henry Epino, a 1994 Stanford graduate and medical director for the PIH clinic in Rwanda, delivered a second keynote address describing his experiences in the strife-ridden African nation — a speech FACE AIDS Director of Events Caity Rocha, a senior, called “one of the most poignant of the conference.”

The forum concluded with leadership training modules for national FACE AIDS organizers.

“We’re trying to set up this structure of teaching others how to put their FACE AIDS chapters together on their respective college campuses,” Rocha said. “It’s only going to get bigger from here.”