Laura Bush in Mozambique

2007-06-27 12:46

Emmanuel Camillo

Maputo - US first lady Laura Bush arrived in Mozambique on Wednesday on the second leg of a four-nation Africa tour that focuses on how the United States is helping to fight Aids and malaria.

Laura Bush, accompanied by her daughter Jenna, is visiting areas that have benefited from US Aids funding this week - including the west African nations of Mali and Senegal, where she spent Tuesday, as well as Zambia in southern Africa.

The first lady met on Wednesday morning with the staff of the US embassy in Maputo and was then to meet with President Amando Guebuza.

Southern Africa is hardest hit by the Aids pandemic, accounting for the vast majority of the 40 million infections and the daily death toll of 8 000. Despite the advances in Aids treatment taken for granted in rich countries, more than 70% of Africans who need it are still waiting.

Mozambique, which was wracked by a civil war lasting from independence in 1976 to 1992, remains one of the world's poorest nations, but the former Portuguese colony, known for its Indian Ocean beaches and islands, has become a model for economic reform.

However, an estimated 1.6 million Mozambicans are HIV-positive, and an estimated 500 people of the 12 million population are becoming infected every day. About 150 people die each day of malaria and the disease causes about seven deaths per hour in the nation's hospitals.

But hope is emerging because of new political will, more funding from programmes President Bush's malaria initiative, better drugs and more powerful anti-mosquito weapons - including the pesticide DDT, long reviled but now rehabilitated by the international health community.

During her stay in Mozambique, Laura Bush is due to visit a site near the Mozal aluminium smelter where authorities want to spray house walls with DDT to ward off mosquitoes, using funds from the US Malaria Initiative that commits $1.2bn over the next five years.

Bishop Dinis Sengulane, head of Mozambique's Rollback Malaria Initiative, said he hoped Bush's visit would increase acceptance of spraying, which has contributed to an 88% fall in cases in the country.

Bush, a former librarian, is scheduled to visit a paediatric hospital in Maputo as well as deliver a speech at a local seminary. She will also participate in a women's empowerment round-table luncheon.

She leaves on Wednesday evening for neighbouring Zambia.

- AP