By Toye Olori
ABUJA, Jul 12 2003 (IPS)

U.S. President George W. Bush ended his five-nation tour of Africa Saturday, with a pledge to support Africa’s fight against HIV/AIDS and poverty.

Over the next five years, the United States will spend 15 billion U.S. dollars to fight AIDS around the world, with special focus on Africa, Bush said in the Nigerian capital of Abuja.

”We will work with governments and private groups and faith-based organisations to put in place a comprehensive system to prevent, to diagnose and to treat AIDS. We will support abstinence-based education for young people in schools and churches and community centres. We will provide comprehensive services to treat millions of new infections,” he said.

Nigeria, where five million people are living with the disease, is one of the beneficiaries of Bush’s HIV/AIDS package. Others are Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Nearly 30 million people in Africa are living with HIV/AIDS, including three million children under the age of 15.

Bush, who visited a hospital in Abuja, praised the dedication of Africans in their fight against the disease.

”At the National hospital, I saw the heroic efforts of African doctors and nurses and volunteers who were devoted to saving and extending lives. I also heard from men and women who are living with AIDS and continue to live productive and hopeful lives,” he said.

”The progress we are already seeing in parts of Africa is proof that AIDS can be defeated in Africa. People of Africa are fighting HIV/AIDS with courage, and I am here to say you will not be alone in your fight,” he said.

The Bush administration is helping Nigeria in establishing four health centres, with equipment and trained staff. They are to serve as model centres for further expansion of Bush’s HIV/AIDS initiative.

The centres will provide care and support, treatment with anti-retroviral drugs, treatment of opportunistic infections, prevention of mother-to-child transmission, voluntary counselling and testing.

”With Nigeria’s size, its population, the disease’s growth, we expect Nigeria to receive more than 25 percent of the U.S. grant that is supposed to come to Africa for HIV/AIDS control," says Sani Gwazo, National Coordinator AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infection Control Programme.

Perhaps what is needed most is a change of attitude in sexual behaviour. In Uganda, the approach adopted by the government of President Yoweri Museveni in changing attitudes has reduced the HIV infection rate from 30 to five percent, the most dramatic decline in the world.

"For many in Uganda, the value of this achievement is beyond measure. Men and women are gaining years of life. More Ugandan children are growing up with mothers and fathers, and this country is reclaiming its future. Life by life, village by village, Uganda is showing that AIDS can be defeated across Africa," Bush said on Friday.

Bush’s wife Laura had tears in her eyes – caught by TV cameras – as she listened to a performance by Watoto Choir in Entebbe, Uganda. The children are mostly AIDS orphans.

Although Uganda is a success story, it still faces problems in controlling the disease. Of the about 150,000 people who require AIDS treatment, only 10,000 are on anti-retroviral drugs, according to official statistics.

Poverty is preventing the majority of the people, who are living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda, from accessing the drugs. It is the same problem across the continent, where more than 350 million people, over 50 percent of Africa’s population, live below the poverty line of one U.S. dollar a day, according to the World Bank. Before heading for the United States on Saturday, Bush addressed the annual summit of the Leon Sullivan Foundation held in Abuja.

The foundation, named after Sullivan, an African-American human rights activist who died in 2001, does charity work across Africa. The most prominent work it is doing is the training and equipping of physicians in Senegal, President Bush’s first port of call during his tour of Africa.

Since it began working in Senegal eight years ago, a team of American medical professionals have conducted more than 100 operations, including 88 open heart surgeries, in that country.

Over the past ten years the foundation has helped to establish more than 182 rural schools in Africa, with 820 American teachers.

While in Abuja, Bush announced that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will grant five million U.S. dollars to the foundation to send 90 American teachers to train more than 14,000 African educators.

Bush’s Jul. 7-12 trip took him to Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria.

Excerpt: