"Burkina Faso is an example and a success story in the fight against AIDS," Bruni-Sarkozy said after talks with the country's president Blaise Campaore and his wife Chantal.

Earlier, Bruni-Sarkozy praised the AIDS fighting measures at a Ouagadougou hospital after meeting HIV-positive women and children being treated there.

"For me, the record is very positive in the sense that I have seen here that everyone works together and obtains results," she told the Burkinabe national AIDS council CNLS.

Bruni-Sarkozy also told reporters she wanted to create a foundation in France, but offered no details.

"I'm trying to put it in place right now," she said.

The wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy, Bruni-Sarkozy agreed in November to become a goodwill ambassador for the protection of mothers and children against AIDS for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Some 130,000 people, half of them women, live with the virus causing AIDS in Burkina Faso, one of the world's poorest countries.

Still, the west African country has managed to slice HIV infections from 7.4 percent in 1997 to two percent in 2005 -- partly thanks to more condom use, the United Nations said in a report last year.

The number of HIV-infected babies born has also dropped dramatically in recent years, while the number of HIV-positive patients being treated with antiretroviral drugs has increased thirteen-fold in five years, the CNLS says.

Married to Sarkozy last year, Bruni-Sarkozy has morphed from being supermodel-turned-singer to first spouse.

On Wednesday, she dismissed the possibility of taking on another job in politics.

"I am not ready for a political career," she said.

Referring to France's former first lady Bernadette Chirac, who also served as a local politician in the south-central Correze region, Bruni-Sarkozy added: "She is a real political woman. She knows the work on the ground.

"I don't think I would be capable of doing that," she said.

After announcing her plans for the foundation, Bruni-Sarkozy added: "I want to uphold my engagements as ambassador for the global fund. I want to devote this year to my role (as ambassador) and my responsibilities as my husband's spouse."

Based in Geneva, the Global Fund oversees hundreds of programmes in 136 countries through public-private partnerships that have raised more than 11 billion dollars (8.5 billion euros).

Bruni-Sarkozy expressed interest in helping fight HIV following a visit to South Africa, which has one of the world's largest AIDS caseloads.

She said she hoped her status as first lady could help advance a worthy global cause.

earlier related report
SAfrica aims to double AIDS drug scheme
South Africa will boost its battle against AIDS by almost 90 million dollars (69.5 million euros) over the next three years, doubling the number of people receiving treatment, the finance minister said Wednesday.

The extra 932 million rand will go to treatment and prevention schemes, Trevor Manuel told parliament as he presented the annual budget.

"We are budgeting to extend screening of pregnant mothers coming into the public health system and to phase in an improved drug regimen to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission," he said.

"Our anti-retroviral programme now covers 630,000 people, and the medium term expenditure framework provides for an increase to 1.4 million by 2011/12."

The three-year grant would boost the AIDS spending from 3.4 billion rand (341 million dollars) to 3.9 billion rand in this fiscal year, and up to over 5 billion rand in 2012.

Manuel also revealed 1.8 billion rand was budgeted to introduce three new child vaccines which will reduce infant deaths from pneumococcal pneumonia and rotavirus, which causes diarrhoea.

The leading causes of death for South Africa's 18 million children are AIDS, pneumonia, diarrhoea, malnutrition and low birthweight.

Additional allocations were aimed at expanding immunisation coverage, fighting malaria and tuberculosis, and halving new HIV infections by 2011.

South Africa has the world's highest AIDS rates, with some five million people infected. More than 600,000 are currently receiving anti-retroviral drugs in the world's biggest AIDS treatment programme.

The burdened public health system would be boosted with 728 million rand to a hospital revitalisation programme, in which 31 new hospitals would be built.

"We are profoundly conscious of the complexity of the challenges facing our health services, and the strain on resources associated with a rising disease burden," said Manuel.

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