Bush visit to Africa to promote health care could bolster image
He touts an AIDS program that is part of his legacy.
and delight in Gaborone, the capital, was the Tlokweng Clinic, where a small encampment of c e r v i c a l c a ncer advo - c ates had set up colorful tents. Wearing a gray suit, blue tie and starched white shirt in 83-degree heat, Bush marched through the tents shaking hands and stopped before the press pool to give a brief speech, with his wife by his side.
“I hope our government, when they analyze what works around the world, will understand that PEPFAR has saved over 11 million lives,” Bush said, in remarks he would repeat again and again. “And that while progress has been made, we’ve got to continue to stay in this battle in order to save lives.”
Cervical cancer is caused by strains of human papillomavirus, known as HPV, and women with HIV are at a higher risk for it. In the industrialized world, routine Pap smears and other tests have almost entirely eliminated deaths, but in Africa the disease remains among the most deadly. PEPFAR spends billions of dollars treating women with HIV, only to see them die from cervical cancer, which costs a fraction as much to prevent.
The cure, if administered early and regularly, is as simple as a routine vaginal vinegar wash followed by the use of a tool akin to a soldering iron to burn away exposed lesions. Vaccines given to young women before they become sexually active are effffffffffffective prevention.
Botswana now vaccinates every fififth-grade girl in a campaign that costs the government millions, and PEPFAR spends about $3 mil l i on annually in the country to increase cervical “see-andtreat” screenings. But thousands more women could be saved with a few million dollars more in donations. Namibia’s effffffffffffort has only just begun.
Will Bush’s work in Africa change the minds of his presidency’s critics?
“No,” said Elaine Kamarck, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution who once worked for Al Gore, Bush’s opponent in the 2000 election. Citing the disastrous consequences of the Iraq War and economic crisis, she said, “Nothing he can do now will reverse the damage of his presidency.”
But historian Doris Kearns Goodwin was more forgiving, saying attitudes about presidents shift over time. “President Bush has approached his postpresidency with dignity,” she wrote in an email, “and the fact that he’s continuing progress on curbing
AIDS, malaria and cancer in Africa will be a chapter that historians will honor.”