MAPUTO, July 17 (AFP) - Former US president Bill Clinton arrived in Mozambique Sunday on the first leg of a six-nation Africa tour announcing a 50-million-dollar donation to the country in the fight against HIV and AIDS on the continent.
"The Clinton Foundation, through the Irish government are going to donate 50 million dollars (41.5 million euros) to finance HIV and AIDS and health projects in Mozambique," Clinton said in Maputo.
"My foundation is bound to support Mozambique in its efforts and I am touched at the start of my trip in Africa by the visit to children who are receiving treatment which is saving their lives at the hospital," the former president told reporters.
Clinton arrived earlier Sunday in the Mozambican capital and travelled to the pediatric section of Maputo Central Hospital.
Some 300 children with HIV and AIDS are being treated with anti-retroviral drugs at the hospital, a beneficiary of Clinton Foundation funds.
Ira Magaziner, who heads the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative, said in New York last week the visit to Mozambique, Lesotho, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda would seek to "reinvigorate political will" in those countries for scaling up AIDS treatment programmes.
Clinton also plans to evaluate progress made by the foundation since 2003, a spokesman said.
He will partly be following in the footsteps of US First Lady Laura Bush, who kicked off her own AIDS-related African tour -- taking in South Africa, Tanzania and Rwanda -- in Cape Town on Tuesday.
The Clinton Foundation's work in Africa has concentrated on helping governments design and implement AIDS treatment programmes, with a special focus on children, rural areas and widening access to affordable AIDS drugs.
Mozambique, where up to 1.8 million people are estimated to be HIV positive is Clinton's first stop. He is expected to meet with political and religious leaders throughout his tour in an effort to break down remaining resistance to expanding AIDS initiatives.
While in Tanzania, Clinton will visit the semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar where Muslims comprise 95 percent of the population and AIDS sufferers are often stigmatised.
AIDS will be a secondary issue during the South African leg, the main purpose of which is former president Nelson Mandela's birthday, with Clinton scheduled to give a speech at the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
In Kenya, Clinton will meet with President Mwai Kibaki and launch a major pediatric initiative to counter the prevalence of HIV infections among children.
His final stop will be Rwanda, where the number of known infections spiked in 2003, particularly among women -- a result, experts believe, of the multiple rapes that accompanied the 1994 genocide.
According to the United Nations AIDS programme, sub-Saharan Africa is home to more than 60 percent of people around the world living with HIV. In 2004, an estimated 3.1 million people in the region became newly infected.
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