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| Africa: Central |
| Bush Touts $15B AIDS Program in Uganda |
| 2003-07-11 |
| EFL President Bush wants Uganda’s journey out of the dark scourge of AIDS to serve as a model for his $15 billion global initiative to contain the pandemic. Bush will meet Friday with President Yoweri Museveni and tour an AIDS clinic in Uganda, the fourth stop on his five-nation tour of the region of the world most seriously affected by AIDS. His trip ends Saturday in Nigeria. Uganda, an Oregon-sized nation in east-central Africa, is a model for stemming its once spiraling rate of HIV infection. It stands in sharp contrast to Botswana — another stop on Bush’s African journey — which is struggling with the world’s highest HIV infection rate. Bush’s five-year AIDS plan is modeled after a program in Uganda, which stresses abstinence, monogamy and condom use. Bush’s plan also helps provide disposable medical supplies for the docs and nurses — that will also cut the HIV infection rate. Wonder if M.i.T. knows this? Bush spent several hours Thursday in Botswana where almost four of 10 adults carry the AIDS virus. The country recently launched a public program to give free AIDS drugs and treatment to anyone who needs them, a first-of-its-kind effort in Africa. ``The people of this nation have the courage and the resolve to defeat this disease and you will have a partner in the United States of America,’’ Bush said to applause Thursday before lunch with Botswana’s President Festus Mogae. ``This is the deadliest enemy Africa has ever faced and you will not face this alone.’’ Uganda has managed to put the brakes on a rising HIV infection rate that had decimated the country in the 1980s and 1990s. About 1 million Ugandans are infected, out of a total population of 24 million. A massive public education campaign helped drop the infection rate to about 5 percent. Condom use is widespread, the average age of first sexual contact has been raised and the average number of sexual partners has been reduced. The government’s latest awareness campaign promotes the ``A,B,C,D’’ of HIV - ``abstain,’’ change ``behavior,’’ use ``condoms,’’ or ``die.’’ Catchy turn of phrase. Bush’s $15 billion AIDS plan would target prevention and treatment assistance to a total of 14 hard-hit countries — two in the Caribbean and a dozen in Africa. In Washington on Thursday, a House panel has approved only two-thirds of the $3 billion it had authorized for the first year of Bush’s battle plan for global AIDS. Administration officials have said they can live with the cutback, but Democrats and AIDS activists say U.S. credibility would suffer if Congress does not allot the full $3 billion called for by law. Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters in Pretoria on Thursday that the administration will be aggressive in making sure that whatever money Congress appropriates for Bush’s AIDS proposal goes for ``worthwhile programs that deal with education, deal with teaching young people to abstain, be faithful (and) use contraceptives.’’ ``We’re only going to be investing in those programs that will have a demonstrated payoff and we can see results,’’ Powell said. Results-oriented foreign aid? There’s an idea. If only the UN would follow along. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 And... once you've seen elephants doing it, not much else matters. |
| Posted by: Chuck 2003-7-11 10:28:13 AM |