U.S. first lady Laura Bush began a four-nation tour of Africa in Senegal's capital Dakar on Tuesday, pledging Washington's support in improving education and combating AIDS on the world's poorest continent.

The five-day trip, during which Bush will visit Mozambique, Zambia and Mali, comes a month after her husband President George W. Bush asked Congress to double the U.S. financial commitment to fighting AIDS, particularly in Africa.

After visiting a U.S.-funded clinic in Dakar which provides outpatient treatment to people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, Bush headed to a Dakar primary school where she stressed the need for African governments to fund education.

"Investment in education, no matter how significant, is always worth it," Bush, a former teacher and librarian, said in the sandy school courtyard under the shade of an almond tree.

"By investing in education, governments meet their other fundamental obligations to improve opportunities for children and families, to strengthen their economies and to keep their citizens in good health," she said.

The U.S. government Africa Education Initiative has trained 4,000 new teachers in Senegal since it began in 2002 and aims to train 900,000 across the continent by the end of the decade.

In partnership with U.S. universities, it has also provided half a million new schoolbooks for children in Senegal alone, with another 800,000 to be delivered over the summer, Bush said.

"The old textbooks dated back to 1979, before computers, before cell phones, before the Internet," she said.

"The new books are up-to-date and students are eager to learn about the technologies that are transforming every day life in Senegal," she said, to applause from the crowd.

'NOT A DEATH SENTENCE'

World powers meeting at a G8 summit in Germany this month restated their commitment to double development aid to Africa but campaigners say they have fallen behind on earlier pledges and have promised little fresh cash.

Included in the $60 billion pledged to fights AIDS and other diseases ravaging Africa was George W. Bush's plan to double Washington's anti-AIDS spending to $30 billion over five years.

During her third African tour, Laura Bush will visit projects that have already benefited from the existing $15 billion President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), launched in 2003 to provide drugs to treat HIV patients.

Washington's anti-AIDS policy has in the past been criticized by some in Africa for relying too heavily on preaching abstinence rather than favoring contraception.

But Senegal, which has received more than $25 million in U.S. funding to help keep HIV prevalence low, has been a relative success story. Just 0.7 percent of the population are estimated to be living with HIV, compared with more than one third in the southern African country of Botswana.

More than 25 million people globally have died of AIDS, an incurable disease that ravages the body's immune system, since it was first recognized more than a quarter of a century ago.

About 40 million live with HIV, most in sub-Saharan Africa, where the virus is spread primarily through heterosexual sex.

India is expected this week to release sharply lower AIDS figures but also to announce a six-fold jump in spending to reduce the rate of infection over the next five years, officials say.

Almost three billion dollars, including about a third from foreign donors, will be poured into the next stage of India's HIV/AIDS prevention efforts to be launched in New Delhi on Friday, a top official said.

Previous estimates from India's National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) have put the HIV caseload in this country of more than one billion people at 5.2 million, while UNAIDS in 2006 estimated 5.7 million cases.

That figure made India the country with the highest number of people infected with HIV in the world.

Indian officials were tightlipped on Saturday about the new numbers.

"There will certainly be a decline but it has to be understood in the correct context, with the correct reading," NACO director Sujatha Rao told AFP.

A senior official with UNAIDS, the UN agency that coordinates the campaign against HIV/AIDS, also told AFP earlier this month that the numbers would likely drop.

"Most probably the figures will be lower than we thought," said Dennis Broun, country director for UNAIDS India.

"When UNAIDS gave the estimate of 5.7 million in India we said it could as low as 3.4 million and as high as nine. That is a very broad range. It might be that it could be even lower."

Reports in local media have put the new estimate at around three to 3.5 million cases.

Officials said the massive drop could be attributed to the fact that the data available this year is better than ever.

"There are more sentinel sites than before so we have a better picture of the epidemic," said Broun, referring to testing sites where samples are taken from members of both low- and high-risk groups, to be used as markers.

"We also have a population-based survey, we have a good behavioural surveillance survey, a whole set of surveys has been done in high-presence states among high-risk groups."

More than 1,100 testing sites were used this year as compared to 700 in the past, NACO's epidemiologist Ajay Kumar Khera told AFP.

The north was under-represented before, he said, skewing nationwide estimates towards southern states with higher rates of infection.

And a wide-ranging population health survey tested 100,000 adults randomly between December 2005 and August 2006.

International health organisations have for years worried about the possibility of a South Africa-style AIDS epidemic in India, but the new figures being mentioned would mean a fairly low infection rate.

However organisations that work with high-risk groups such as commercial sex workers, intravenous drug users and homosexual men said their work will go on as before.

"We will continue doing the work we do because that's what we believe is important," said Anjali Gopalan, who heads the Naz Foundation, which works with gay men.

NACO's director said the country would not pull back on its AIDS plans even in the event of a sharply lower case count.

"It's not a curable disease. The mode of transmission is due to reasons over which there is very little human control: private and personal behaviours like sex," said Rao.

"Numbers don't matter. To bring in behaviour change is a tough call so you can't ever relax or it's just a matter of time before it can invade the whole country."

An Indian husband was forced to deliver his wife's baby after doctors refused to touch the HIV-positive woman, a report said Friday.

The husband told India's NDTV news channel he carried out the delivery as doctors at Meerut Medical College and Hospital in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh shouted instructions from a distance.

"They came but simply stood in a line and asked me to pull out the baby and cut the umbilical cord," said the 28-year-old man, described as a poor painter, in Meerut town, 65 kilometres (40 miles) from the Indian capital New Delhi.

The hospital "asked me to clean up all the blood and burn the waste," the man said.

"The doctors were not coming," his wife told NDTV, a day after the delivery of the couple's fourth child.

Hospital officials dismissed the couple's complaints when questioned by NDTV.

"How can I believe what he said?" said Abhilasha Gupta, head of the medical school's gynaecology department. "These days those who have HIV think they will get media sympathy by blaming others."

But officials from India's National Aids Control Organisation (NCAO) expressed shock at the report and said it would be investigated.

"In this particular case we have recommended stringent action against the doctors," NACO chief Sujatha Rao told the channel.

"Even if they were to touch contaminated blood, they are not in danger."

The report was the latest reminder of the discrimination suffered in India by those living with HIV and AIDS because of widespread lack of awareness about the illness.

HIV-positive children are often refused schooling and adults with the virus frequently face dismissal.

India, with a billion-plus population, has 5.7 million people infected with HIV -- the world's highest in absolute numbers.

However, officials said this month that under new data due to be released in early July, the number of HIV-positive could be as low as 3.4 million.

A group of HIV-positive children trying to attend school in southern India have faced a fresh setback with parents of their classmates pulling their kids out of class, officials said Monday.

The move was the latest twist in a six-month battle that has highlighted the stigma suffered in India by those living with HIV and AIDS -- in this case one boy and four girls aged between five and 11.

The children appeared to have won a victory last week when the Christian school in southern Kerala state that threw them out six months ago allowed them to return to class -- but it was short-lived.

"Among the 65 students on our rolls, only three children came to school on June 21 and the next day none turned up," principal Elsamma Mani told AFP.

"Today also the school remained closed as no students turned up to attend class."

Officials have assured parents that HIV is not transferred by sitting next to or touching an infected person, but suspicion remains.

"I will not let my children attend classes with the HIV-positive children, come what may," an irate mother who had pulled her kids from the school told the NDTV news channel Monday.

Another father, speaking to AFP, questioned why the shelter that houses the kids had not admitted them into its own school if there was no risk of transmission.

The school's parent-teacher association has said it will not send children to class in protest against state government pressure over the affair, which has seen the establishment threatened with the loss of its permit to operate.

The kids were first "outed" when a local paper published photographs of them attending an event on world AIDS day in December, a report in the Hindustan Times said, prompting other parents to call for their expulsion.

Three of the five children are infected with HIV but all were living in a shelter for infected mothers.

Officials in Kerala state -- reputed to be one of the country's most progressive -- said they would continue to work to make sure the children were accepted.

"I hope that the villagers will realise their mistake and accept the children," said Kerala education minister M.A. Baby.

India, with a billion-plus population, has 5.7 million people infected with HIV -- the world's highest in absolute numbers per country.

Officials said this month that under new data being compiled, the number of HIV-positive could be as low as 3.4 million.

The United States Wednesday called for the "immediate and unconditional" release of AIDS jailed activist Phyu Phyu Thinn in Myanmar, and urged the military regime there to look after her health.

"The United States calls for the immediate and unconditional release of Phyu Phyu Thinn (and) others recently detained while praying at pagodas," US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement.

Phyu Phyu Thinn, 34, was taken from her home by police on May 21 after attending prayer vigils calling for the freedom of opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest in Yangon for the past 17 years.

Phyu Phyu Thinn and other HIV patients have made vigils at Yangon pagodas to seek the release of Phyu Phyu Thin since late May.

"If, as media reports suggest, Phyu Phyu Thinn has begun a hunger strike," McCormack added in his statement, "the United States expects the Burmese military regime to provide her with appropriate and humane medical attention."

"The United States remains concerned about the continued detention of HIV/AIDS activist Phyu Phyu Thinn and other pro-democracy activists who were detained without charges ... for gathering to pray for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi," the spokesman said.

Senate Democrats are cutting President Bush's marquee foreign aid program to funnel more money to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa and elsewhere.

The Senate Appropriations Committee is slated Thursday to cut Bush' $3 billion request for the Millennium Challenge Corporation to $1.4 billion. The program channels foreign aid to countries implementing economic and political reforms but has been slow to disburse prior appropriations.

The Senate panel is boosting Bush's $4.2 billion request for the foreign aid bill's Global HIV/AIDS account by $900 million, including adding $550 million to the administration's request for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — enough to almost triple it.

Altogether, however, the Senate panel would cut Bush's request for foreign aid and the State Department budget by almost $900 million, transferring money to domestic accounts favored on Capitol Hill.

But the Senate foreign aid bill, like its House counterpart, faces a veto since it would ease restrictions on overseas groups that perform or promote abortion by allowing them to receive U.S.-donated contraceptives. A ban on direct monetary aid would remain in place.

The Senate panel also faces a battle over whether to loosen restrictions on local law enforcement agencies' ability to gain access to gun-purchasing data to trace the movement of illegal guns around the nation.

Such restrictions have been in place for almost four years as part of a separate spending bill funding the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, drawing fire from gun control groups, who say they hamper law enforcement authorities' ability to trace illegal guns and arrest weapons traffickers.

Gun rights groups such as the National Rifle Association say the data-sharing restrictions protect gun owners' privacy

The $54.6 billion Justice Department funding bill also fully finances NASA's budget, as well as Bush's "competitiveness initiative" boosting basic research and improving training and recruitment of math and science teachers. It contains budget hikes totaling $3.8 billion above Bush's February budget.

That's more than 7 percent and is sure to also attract a veto threat.

Meanwhile, the House continued to wade through a $21.4 billion bill funding the Treasury Department and White House budgets, as well as numerous agencies. The low-profile bill is one of the few measures not facing a veto threat over its price tag.

But the bill still faces a veto since Democrats lifted restrictions barring the use of U.S. funds to implement the District of Columbia's domestic partnership law. The District government uses locally raised money to implement the law, so the outcome of a floor battle over keeping the current restriction in place won't have much of an impact.

The World Bank has approved a loan of 80 million dollars (60 million euros) to boost Kenya's efforts to fight HIV/AIDS, which poses a major challenge in the country, an official statement said Wednesday.

The funds will be used to strengthen the National AIDS Control Council (NACC), the country's frontline agency in fighting the deadly disease that has killed at least 1.5 million people since 1984.

"We are determined that the support should reach the five million people in Kenya - especially orphans and young women - who are directly and indirectly affected and made very vulnerable by the disease," said Colin Bruce, the bank's representative in Kenya, in the statement.

Britain's Department for International Development (DfID) is also expected to provide 33 million dollars (25 million euros) in additional funding towards the country's war against the scourge, the statement added.

The NACC said Tuesday the rate of HIV/AIDS infections in the country of nearly 35 million fell from 6.1 percent in 2004 to 5.9 percent in 2005.

A shift in sexual habits and the more widespread use of condoms had played a large part in curbing infections, whose prevalence Kenya aims to slash to a rate of 5.5 percent by 2010, said the agency.

At least 1.3 million people are currently living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya, 65 percent of whom are women between the ages of 19 and 45, according to NACC statistics.

Last year, Kibaki announced that public hospitals would no longer charge HIV/AIDS patients for life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs, in a new bid to fight the disease

US health care group Abbott Fund is considering building a pharmaceutical plant in Tanzania to manufacture anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs), state media reported Friday.

In talks with President Jakaya Kikwete late Thursday, the fund's chief Meles White said he will send experts to conduct a feasibility study once the government approves the project.

"President Kikwete supported the idea and directed the minister for health and social welfare to further the talks with the firm," state-run Daily News said.

In addition, White promised to donate anti-retroviral drugs worth one million dollars to support Kikwete's pledge to fight the deadly disease. Tanzania imports most of its medicines, including life-prolonging ARVs.

In 2005, Abbott Fund, an Illinois-based non-profit organisation, launched a 35-million dollar HIV/AIDS testing and treatment facility in the country's main hospital in Dar es Salaam.

Of the 37.6 million peopleliving in Tanzania, between 1.6 and two million are believed to be infected with the virus that causes AIDS, according to official estimates.