Washington — President Bush signed legislation on Wednesday that authorizes training 140,000 new health-care workers to fight HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria in the developing world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. American colleges and universities are expected to play a major role in preparing doctors, nurses, and other such health workers.

The measure, HR 5501, the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008, states that the U.S. government should develop “ a strategy to encourage postsecondary educational institutions in partner countries, particularly in Africa, in collaboration with U.S. postsecondary educational institutions, including historically black colleges and universities, to develop such human and institutional capacity and in the process further build their capacity to sustain the fight against these diseases.”

Another provision calls for “the development of public-private partnerships involving colleges and universities, with the goal of increasing pediatric HIV work-force capacity, and focuses on the promotion and development of in-country or intra-regional pediatric training for physicians and other health professionals.”

The National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges had pressed Congress to include specific language in the bill on colleges’ role in the training and education. The group’s president, M. Peter McPherson, praised the new law as a “very important development.”

“For the first time, America’s fight against AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis specifically carves out a role for U.S. colleges and universities in the training and education of health-care workers in the disease-ravaged countries,” Mr. McPherson said in a written statement.

For the effort to go forward, however, Congress will still need to appropriate funds through a separate annual budget bill. —Karin Fischer