By JIM LANDERS
Washington Bureau
jlanders@dallasnews.com
Published: 08 June 2012 04:21 PM
LUSAKA, Zambia On a beautiful Saturday morning, Delfi Nyankombe stood among her bracelets and necklaces at a churchyard bazaar and pondered a question:
What do you think of George W. Bush?
George Bush is a great man, she answered. He tried to help poor countries like Zambia when we were really hurting from AIDS. He empowered us, especially women, when the number of people dying was frightening. Now we are able to live.
Nyankombe, 38, is a mother of three girls. She also admires the former president because of his current campaign to corral cervical cancer. Few are screened for the disease, and it now kills more Zambian women than any other cancer.
By the time a woman knows, she may need radiation or chemotherapy that can have awful side effects, like fistula, she said. This is a big problem in Zambia, and hes still helping us.
The debate over a presidents legacy lasts many years longer than his term of office. At home, theres still no consensus about the 2001-09 record of George W. Bush, with its wars and economic turmoil.
In Africa, hes a hero.
No American president has done more for Africa, said Festus Mogae, who served as president of Botswana from 1998 to 2008. Its not only me saying that. All of my colleagues agree.
AIDS was an inferno burning through sub-Saharan Africa. The American people, led by Bush, checked that fire and saved millions of lives...
Bush remains active in African health. Last September, he launched a new program dubbed Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon to tackle cervical and breast cancer among African women. The program has 14 co-sponsors, including the Obama administration...
A decade ago, AIDS was killing 630 of every 100,000 Zambians, according to the World Health Organization. That was 100 times the AIDS death rate in the United States.
In neighboring Botswana, the toll was 750 of every 100,000 people. That was four times the rate for the leading cause of death among Texans (heart disease).
In 2001, four in 10 adults in Botswana were infected with HIV. President Mogae went before the United Nations to plead for the life of his country.
We are threatened with extinction, he said. People are dying in chillingly high numbers. It is a crisis of the first magnitude.
Bush, with bipartisan support from Congress and $15 billion, mobilized the U.S. government with the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. In 2008, Congress agreed to provide $38 billion more.
By the time Bush left office, the death rate from AIDS had fallen more than 60 percent in Botswana. There are now 330,000 taking anti-retroviral drugs.
The death rate fell by nearly half in Zambia. There are 418,000 Zambians taking the drugs...