As much as he is hated by some people, George W. Bush deserves credit ...

...for proposing and supporting expenditure of large sums of money to combat AIDS/HIV, malaria, and other diseases in Africa and in other parts of the world. See, e.g., the AP story "Bush eager to sign bill tripling AIDS assistance". Such health programs were not on the American agenda until Bush proposed them in his State of the Union address in 2003.

How much of a difference have such aid programs made? Consider just one piece of data from the story cited above:

The current $15 billion act, which expires at the end of September, has helped bring lifesaving anti-retroviral drugs to some 1.7 million people and supported care for nearly 7 million.

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