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DEVELOPMENT REPORT -- July 15, 2002: US Money for
AIDS in Africa
By Jill Moss
This is the VOA Special English Development Report.
President Bush has announced a new five-hundred-million
dollar plan to help prevent the spread of the AIDS virus in developing
countries. Mister Bush said the money will be used in several countries
in Africa and the Caribbean to prevent pregnant women from passing the
AIDS virus to their babies.
Each day, more than two-thousand babies become
infected with H-I-V, the virus that causes AIDS. Infected mothers pass
the virus to their babies either during pregnancy, birth or while breast-feeding.
The Bush proposal seeks to provide medicine for one-million pregnant
women and their babies each year during the next five years. The goal
is to reduce the number of infected babies by forty percent. The program
also hopes to build health systems so that mothers and other adults
can receive tests and treatment for AIDS and H-I-V.
Earlier this year, Congress approved two-hundred-million dollars to
fight AIDS. The new Bush plan will increase that amount by three-hundred-million
dollars over the next two years. President Bush says the money will
be spent in ten African and Caribbean countries. They are Botswana,
Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda,
Guyana, and Haiti. United States government agencies will carry out
the plan.
President Bush announced his new plan last month
before traveling to Canada for a meeting of the world抯 seven leading
industrialized countries and Russia. A top issue discussed at the Group
of Eight meeting was aid to Africa. The Bush Administration had been
under growing international pressure to show support for poor countries.
Administration officials hope its new AIDS proposal will ease criticism
about American aid to developing nations.
Last year, more than five-million people were
infected with H-I-V. About seven-hundred-thousand of those victims were
babies. President Bush said that medical science has provided the power
to help save these young lives. He said this is something the United
States must do.
Mister Bush recently announced he will visit
Africa next year. He said the trip will seek to increase trade between
the United States and African nations. He said other goals are to reduce
poverty, protect workers?rights and support human rights.
This VOA Special English Development Report
was written by Jill Moss.
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