US President George W. Bush wants Uganda's journey out of the dark scourge of AIDS to serve as a model for his US$15 billion global initiative to contain the pandemic.
Bush was to meet yesteray 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 today in Nigeria.
Uganda 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 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 US," Bush said to applause Thursday before lunch with Botswana's President Festus Mogae.
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."
"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 at a meeting in Washington last month.
"The alternative was decimation," he said.
Prevention is affordable but drugs to treat the infected are not. They cost about US$26 a month, while Uganda spends about US$3.50 on health care per citizen annually.
Bush's US$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 US$3 billion it had authorized for the first year of Bush's battle plan for global AIDS.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters in Pretoria on Thursday that the administration will be aggressive in making sure that whatever amounts of 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."
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not