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President Bush opened a coast-to-coast journey through Africa on Saturday by highlighting how U.S. aid can help a small western African nation like Benin develop and save lives.

"Those dollars come with great compassion," Bush told Thomas Boni Yayi, the president of Benin. "We care when we see suffering. We believe we're all children of God."

The president and his wife, Laura, landed in the West African nation on a muggy day, walking off Air Force One onto a red carpet. They were greeted with a military salute by troops in camouflage uniforms and berets, men in purple shirts blowing lively tunes on horns and signs of appreciation for U.S. aid to the nation.

One placard read: "Beninese people will remember forever."

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The Africa trip provides a rare opportunity to showcase a part of his record that draws wide praise from across the ideological spectrum. By all accounts, Bush has done more to combat the AIDS pandemic that has devastated Africa than any other president, and even his harshest critics usually credit him for paying attention to a region often neglected by Washington. Much of the world has soured on the United States, but surveys by the Pew Global Attitudes Project show that Africa is one place where it is held in high regard.

Bush overcame resistance within his own White House in his first term to launch a five-year, $15 billion war on HIV in Africa and elsewhere known as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. About 1.3 million people in Africa have received life-saving anti-retroviral medication as part of what experts call the largest international health initiative dedicated to one disease in history.


"His administration is really the first one to put the AIDS global pandemic on the policy map," said Josh Ruxin, a Columbia University professor who runs health programs in Rwanda. "There was a lot of talk in the Clinton administration, but there wasn't so much doing. It was the Bush administration that got out of talking about millions for AIDS and instead talking about billions."

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

     Interesting stuff.  Thanks for the links, Level.

     Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of hope for Africa.

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ORIGINAL: Level

Lady E, I'm glad he's done some things right; I've said before, I don't see him as a monster, but he surely has made some mistakes. Big ones.

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The Bush Administration has significantly increased aid to Africa, but that increase falls far short of what the President has claimed. U.S. aid to Africa from FY 2000 (the last full budget year of the Clinton Administration) to FY2004 (the last completed fiscal year of the Bush Administration) has not "tripled" or even doubled. Rather, in real dollars, it has increased 56% (or 67% in nominal dollar terms). The majority of that increase consists of emergency food aid, rather than assistance for sustainable development of the sort Africa needs to achieve lasting poverty reduction.

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But they also charged that Bush appears determined to protect Big Pharma from competition by the generic manufacturers and they pointed to announcements shortly after Thompson's by major U.S. and western drug companies that they intended to introduce FDCs as well as evidence that the administration is doing the companies' bidding.
Three big U.S. pharmaceutical companies - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Gilead Sciences Inc. and Merck & Co, Inc. - announced Sunday night that they are jointly pursuing development of their own one-dose-a-day anti-AIDS drug, while British-based GlaxoSmithKline and Germany's Boehringer Ingelheim Corp. said they were also considering a co-packaging deal for FSCs.
Activists said they believe the administration stalled the PEPFAR program so the brand-name pharmaceutical companies could play "catch up" to the generic manufacturers in developing their own FDCs. "The U.S., while appearing to finally find religion on this issue," said Health Global Access Project's (HealthGAP) Asia Russell, "continues to buy time to lock in countries and recipients into using only patented drugs. This decision will cost money, time, and lives," she added.
"The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is behind the game on FDCS, and the White House is stepping in to help them catch up with the more innovative generic producers who have pioneered FDCS," said Bill Fletcher, Jr., president of TransAfrica Forum in Washington. He and Booker called for Congress, which has generally shown much greater urgency in dealing with the AIDS crisis, to pass legislation to compel the administration to buy generic FDCs.