Bush gets warm welcome
2008-02-19 10:34
Arusha - United States President George W Bush was swept up in an outpouring of affection on Monday in Tanzania's rural north, where tens of thousands lined the road to see him, one woman burst into a dance of joy just from a hug and fierce-looking Maasai warriors leapt and chanted in his honour.
Midway through a trek through five African nations that had benefited from US largesse, Bush spent the day in Mount Kilamanjaro's massive shadow to reinforce the strides being made with his malaria programme.
During stops at both a rural health complex and on a gleaming factory floor, Bush showcased real-life benefits of the US-led fight against the mosquito-borne disease that killed one million young children each year in impoverished tropical countries.
The president launched a five-year, $1.2bn plan in 2005 to cut malaria deaths in half in the hardest-hit countries, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Vouchers for 2m nets handed out
It leveraged private sector support to provide indoor spraying, cutting-edge drugs and vouchers for a 75% discount off the purchase of insecticide-treated bed nets.
US Congress so far had put $425m into the plan and Bush said it had reached 25 million people in two years. Vouchers for two million nets had been handed out in Tanzania alone.
And Bush announced on Monday that the US - in partnership with the country's government, the World Bank and the UN-sponsored Global Fund - would start distributing another 5.2 million nets here for free within six months. That was enough, he said, to cover every Tanzanian child between ages 1 and 5.
"The power to save lives comes with the moral obligation to use it," he said in an open-air pavilion at the Meru District Hospital. "This is a practical way to help save lives."
The visit to this striking region near the Kenyan border took Bush from scrubby plains into lush foothills covered with banana trees and coffee farms and back to wide-open spaces dotted with cactus.
President's administration 'nears end'
Over all loomed Kilamanjaro, the tip of its dramatic snowcapped peak shrouded in clouds for all but the start of the day. Though the area was extremely poor, it also - with its proximity to the mountain's climbing trails and famed game parks - was a cradle of African tourism.
Talk of US Senator Barack Obama, whose Kenyan father had made his US presidential campaign a subject of intense fascination here, also followed Bush to Arusha.
Three black-and-white "Obama 08" signs were spotted in onlookers' hands along the road - a reminder not only of the Democrats' chance to take the White House from Bush's Republican Party, but that the president's administration was nearing an end.
But the region's effusive demonstration of thanks for the US drive to improve African lives dominated the day.
As Bush's motorcade sped back and forth across the region, people lined almost the entire route several deep just to watch him pass.
- AP