By Brian Orloff and Mary Green, People.com
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's Jolie-Pitt Foundation has made a $2 million donation to the Global Health Committee to establish a center to aid children affected by tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia.
The center will be modeled after the Cambodian Health Committee's Maddox Chivan Children's Center in Cambodia, where children receive medical, education and social services.
"Our goal is to transfer the success we have had in Cambodia to Ethiopia where people are needlessly dying of tuberculosis, a curable disease, and HIV/AIDS, a treatable disease," Jolie said in a statement.
As in Cambodia, where the couple named the center after their eldest child, the Ethiopian branch will be named for Zahara, 3, who was adopted from Ethiopia.
"It is our hope when Zahara is older she will take responsibility of the clinic and continue its mission," Pitt said in a statement.
The clinic will also focus on tuberculosis care. The disease causes approximately 2 million deaths yearly, and is the largest cause of death worldwide for children and adults with AIDS.
"The fact that poor people continue to die in our world today of TB, a curable disease, because of lack of access to drugs and care is unacceptable," Pitt said.
The Jolie-Pitt foundation was established in Sept. 2006, when the couple donated $1 million to the Global Action for Children organization and $1 million to Doctors Without Borders.
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Angie and Brad are truly the best. I like their genuine effort to help children around the world and they are a class act. They have not only the talent in what they do, they also have big heart and a mind that works unlike many "successful white folks" who like to talk about helping the poor when they meet their pastors every Sunday morning, but turn around and curse as if being born to a poor family is a child's fault.
Ethiopia, Cambodia, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Congo, Haiti, etc have been turned into leaving hell mainly by power hungry and incompetent "leaders" (e.g. Zenawi for brutality and Mugabe for sheer incompetence). What Angie and Brad are doing as citizens of this world should be emulated by thousands of people from around the world to alleviate the suffering of children.
Thank you again for helping my fellow Ethiopians who are suffering from disease and hunger and are practically imprisoned in their own country by a mindless dictator and his cronies.
September 15th, 2008 at 7:46 pm