Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

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George W. Bush’s legacy as a humanitarian

On the Fourth of July, George W. Bush wasn’t sitting around watching fireworks. And two days later, on his 66th birthday, you didn’t see him blowing out candles on a cake.

The former president, along with first lady Laura, spent the first week of this month on a mission in Africa — celebrating life in a land plagued by a number of diseases that cause so much death.

In addition to spreading paint while renovating a clinic, Bush also spread a little joy and hope among people delighted that he had come to help them. He said his return to Africa was not as an ex-president, but “as a laborer.”

I’ve criticized Bush for a lot of things he did as president, but I’ve praised him for his humanitarian efforts, particularly his fight against HIV/AIDS and other diseases in Africa.

For me his lasting legacy will be not war, but peace; not lives lost, but lives saved; not destruction, but construction.

In 2003 Bush created the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar), providing $15 billion for prevention and treatment programs in countries devastated by HIV infections. Congress increased the funding to $48 billion five years later.

The year Pepfar started about 50,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa were on antiretroviral therapy to suppress HIV, Bush said in column he wrote for The Wall Street Journal on World AIDS Day last December.

“Today more than 4.7 million people receive AIDS treatment through Pepfar and the Global Fund (to fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis),” he said. “At least 450,000 children have been born HIV-negative due to Pepfar’s diagnosis and treatment programs that prevent mother-to-child transmission.”

Millions of people in Africa are alive today because of Bush’s efforts, and he and the former first lady want to save even more. Thus, their return to the continent this month.

This time the emphasis was on women’s health, specifically targeting cervical and breast cancer, which are leading causes of death in southern Africa. Women who are HIV-positive are at greater risk of being affected by cervical cancer.

“The saddest thing of all is to know a lady’s life has been saved from AIDS but died from cervical cancer,” Bush told the Daily Mail’s online service.

The Bushes started in Zambia, where the former president, dressed in blue jeans, a T-shirt and tennis shoes, helped renovate a clinic where women will be screened and treated for cervical cancer. The country has the second highest number of cervical cancer cases in the world, according to Mail Online.

On America’s Independence Day Bush visited one of the largest orphanages in Zambia, where he was an instant hit with the kids, 60 of whom are living with HIV.

The last part of the trip was spent in Botswana, where another cancer-fighting program was announced.

The Africa cancer initiative, Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon, is a project of the George W. Bush Institute, the U.S. Department of State, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Photos released by the Bush Center show him warmly interacting with the people of Africa, especially the young children. He and his wife were visibly moved.

This is diplomacy at its best, a direct involvement in the lives of individuals that will have lasting and endearing effects.

Still, there are those in this country who think the U.S. should not intervene on any level in Africa and other countries. Bush spoke to that in his Wall Street Journal piece.

“During moments of economic hardship, there is a temptation for Americans to disengage from the world,” he wrote. “But isolationism is always shortsighted and too often leads to greater hardship and despair in places that need our help. ...

“It is hopelessness that aids extremists and spreads deadly ideologies. It is in failed states and ungoverned regions where many of the world’s challenges arise. There is no effective way to oppose the enemies of freedom without also opposing the shared enemies of humankind — disease and poverty.”

Well said.

Bob Ray Sanders is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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