Estimated Aids-related deaths in South Africa: 1 675 362 at noon, Wednesday January 18 2006
American first lady Laura Bush on Sunday began her four-day trip to West Africa full of praise for the continent’s first elected woman president, but irritated by criticism of promoting abstinence to help combat Aids.
‘She serves as an important role model for little girls on the continent as well around the world,†said Bush of Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, whose inauguration she attended on Monday.
The rest of Bush’s trip, which includes Nigeria, will focus on education and the HIV/Aids pandemic, which the United Nations estimates infects more than 30million people in Africa. The disease has killed at least 20million worldwide.
US President George W Bush has proposed a $15billion emergency plan to help stem its spread in Africa and the Caribbean, but critics have complained that the programme leans too heavily on the promotion of abstinence and fails to emphasise condom usage.
‘The plan all along has been Uganda’s plan of ABC: abstinence, be faithful, and the correct and consistent use of condoms,†said Laura Bush. Uganda has brought its Aids infection rate down from 30% in the 1990s to about 6% now.
In a part of the world where one in three people have a sexually transmitted disease, and in countries ‘where girls feel obligated to comply with the wishes of menâ€, women need to know that abstinence is a choice, said Bush.
‘When girls are not empowered, their chances of negotiating their sexual life with their partner and encouraging or making their partner use a condom are very low.â€
Opponents contend that Bush programme money is often siphoned off to faith-based groups that preach abstinence, but supporters say promoting the use of condoms in Africa has failed to halt the disease.
Source: Reuters