"You have shown the world what is possible in terms of reducing infection
rates," Bush told Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni during a meeting between
the two.
Uganda, an Oregon-sized nation in east-central Africa, is a model for
stemming its once-spiraling rate of HIV (news
- web
sites) 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 own five-year, $15 billion AIDS plan is modeled after a program in
Uganda, which stresses abstinence, monogamy and condom use.
Bush also praised Museveni as "a strong advocate of free trade" and a force
for peace in Central Africa.
From their meeting, Bush and his wife, Laura, went on a tour of an AIDS
clinic. Upon his arrival here from South Africa, hundreds of people lined the
streets to greet him on his fourth stop during a five-nation African tour.
The clinic Bush visited saw 4,787 patients in 1997, and 28,776 last year.
The AIDS Support Organization clinic, founded in 1987, was the first and
largest indigenous HIV-services organization in Africa. Most founders of the
TASO clinic network have already died of AIDS.
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. But the disease is still
taking a heavy toll, with about 1 million Ugandans 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."
"We made it our highest priority to convince our people to return to their
traditional values of chastity and faithfulness or, failing that, to use
condoms," Museveni told drug company executives in Washington last month. "The
alternative was decimation."
Prevention is affordable but drugs to treat the infected are not. They cost
about $26 a month, while Uganda spends about $3.50 on health care per citizen
annually.
First lady Laura Bush, who is accompanying her husband on his African trip,
met Thursday with HIV-positive children a center in Botswana's capital of
Gaborone where they and their parents are treated, counseled and given free
AIDS drugs.
The U.S. aid is "showing people here what the real face of America is like,
the compassion that Americans have for the people here who are suffering with
AIDS," she said, sitting between two 9-year-olds with HIV.
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 (news
- web
sites) 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.
Turning to another crisis in Africa, Powell said Bush is likely to decide
within days on the role the United States will play in enforcing a cease-fire
in Liberia, nation on the west coast of the continent that is embroiled in
brutal civil unrest.
He said peacekeeping troops from West African nations should lead the way
into Liberia, with the United States providing mostly support at first.
West African nations plan to send an initial contingent of 1,000 troops
within the next two weeks and are asking the United States to contribute 1,500
troops to the force.
