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Presbyterians urged to wage war on AIDS
02445

Presbyterians urged to wage war on AIDS

Experts' message: Churches are fighting hard, but disease is winning

by Evan Silverstein

NEW YORK - Howard Dotson has seen first-hand what the AIDS virus has done in
South Africa.

Dotson, a Presbyterian, journeyed last summer to the region, where families
and entire villages have been decimated by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The virus
is undermining the very fabric of human life, reducing average life
expectancies by decades, and threatening to eliminate a quarter of some
nations' work forces in the next 20 years. 
 
"The working budget of four countries (in South Africa) for their AIDS
committee is equivalent to only 500 U.S. dollars," Dotson said during a
recent AIDS consultation sponsored by the Presbyterian Church (USA). "That's
how broke they are."

Organizers of the event said whole future generations are imperiled in
Africa, the world's most AIDS-infected continent. In Malawi, 30 percent of
the population is HIV-positive; in the Congo, 25 percent; in the rest of
Africa, 33 percent - and rising.

 "The hospitals in Africa just can't care for the millions of (infected)
people," said Dotson, 31, who plans to become a missionary after he graduates
from San Francisco Theological Seminary. "They're overloaded. People are
dying in their homes."

Forty million people are living with HIV/AIDS around the world. More than 20
million others have died. Fourteen million children have been orphaned so
far. About 800,000 infants are infected each year.

"There will be nations that will be wiped out if it (AIDS) continues at its
present rate," said Dorothy Hanson, the AIDS project manager for the
International Health Ministries Office, which coordinates the PC(USA)'s
international health and development programs. 

That was the grim message Dotson and about 80 other Presbyterian ministers,
educators and health-care professionals heard during the recent four-day
event, titled "The Global AIDS Pandemic: A Consultation for People of Faith."

 The meeting, which started on Oct. 24, was held at the Presbyterian UN
Office and a nearby Manhattan hotel. Its purpose was to mobilize support for
churches in Africa by sending participants back to their congregations and
presbyteries with a plan of action. It also highlighted the faith community's
unique ability to marshal resources against the pandemic.

While U.S. Presbyterians have been active in the fight - especially in Africa
- the faith community was slow to address AIDS-related issues, and now faces
a huge and growing challenge.

Hanson said local churches often are the only institutions capable of
providing education and other support for people with the disease in Africa,
where 15,000 people die every day because of AIDS and malaria. 

"I am delighted to share with you that faith-based organizations are there,"
she told participants in the consultation. "They're at the table now, where
they were not recognized or acknowledged as they should have been just a
short while ago."

 The consultation was a joint project of the Presbyterian AIDS Action program
of the Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD) and the United Nations Office of
the PC(USA), part of the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program.

Organizers said the turnout was about double the usual for UN Office
functions.

"I think that's a testimony to the issue and its importance," said Jennifer
Butler, the associate for global issues at the UN Office. "And also to the
passion of people in the Presbyterian Church to do something about one of the
greatest catastrophes of all time."

Participants were told how they could address the crisis through education,
advocacy, fund-raising and support of PC(USA) partner churches.

Organizers promoted partnerships among churches and between the Christian
community and the private sector, governments and other institutions. The
group explored prevention, home-based care and orphan care, and discussed how
poverty fuels the pandemic. The meeting featured workshops, worship and
exercises in community building.

"We need to be educated," said Margery Fitzsimons, a liaison between
Presbyterian Women and the International Health Ministries Partnership for
AIDS. "First we need to do some consciousness-raising and education, so that
we can get people more involved ... get our churches involved."

Program speakers urged participants to promote presbytery and synod
AIDS-prevention programs and efforts to provide home-care kits, which include
sterile gauze pads and squares, bandages, bath towels and washcloths, for
AIDS patients.

In Uganda, the government and churches have combined in a massive public
health campaign that is credited for greatly lowering the number of new
HIV/AIDS infections. The "ABCD" program there stresses abstinence,
faithfulness in marriage, the use of condoms, limiting numbers of sexual
partners, and public education, especially among young people and
prostitutes. 

Things also are improving in Malawi, where the infection rate is about 12
percent. Until recently, the perception that AIDS is contracted through
sinful behavior caused stigmatizaton of people with the virus and their
families, according to the Rev. Howard Matiya Nhkoma, general secretary of
the Livingstonia Synod of the Church of Central Africa, Presbyterian in
Malawi.

"Possibly this could be one reason why the government of Malawi took a long
time to alert the country of the invasion of the AIDS disease in our
society," Nhkoma said.

Lately, he said, the church and government have joined in the fight against
the stigma, and the disease, jointly sponsoring "programs of prevention and
care," including home-based care programs and community child-care centers.

A 'vicious circle'

Poverty and health problems are a "vicious circle" in many parts of the
world, according to Ray Martin, of Christian Connections for International
Health (CCIH). He said churches and religious institutions must fight for the
poor, resisting political and economic forces favoring the rich and powerful.

"We really can't prepare effective strategies for dealing with AIDS if we
don't understand the larger context in which people get AIDS and ... in which
AIDS is transmitted," said Martin, whose organization promotes health from a
Christian perspective. "Poverty and wealth, disparities, inequalities, are
part of that whole complex, the whole ecology."

Martin said AIDS, which often effects young adults, reduces household income
because it reduces productivity - with the result that the poor are less well
nourished and more vulnerable to disease. "Being poor is bad for your
health," he said, adding that the poor have fewer options for health-care
services and less access to clean water and sanitation and run a "greater
risk of illness from any cause and disability."

Shouldering the burden

Program officials said one of the big needs is money for research and
prevention programs. They argued that faith-based groups, such as the
PC(USA), and the richest nations, such as the United States, should provide
much of the support.

Speakers noted, however, that the United States ranks near the bottom in
terms of financial contributions to the battles against HIV/AIDS and other
medical scourges of the poor, such as malaria and tuberculosis.

"Clearly, government charity, giving 0.1 percent of the Gross National
Product (GNP), is not going to be enough to adequately address poverty, and
certainly not enough to address the AIDS crisis," said Dorothy Brewster-Lee,
a doctor who coordinates the Presbyterian International Health Ministries
Office. "When we actually looked at what Presbyterians were giving, it wasn't
a whole lot better than what the United States was giving."

Brewster-Lee examined Presbyterian giving for AIDS-related programs,
especially through the "0.7 percent initiative," adopted last summer by the
General Assembly, which calls on the U.S. government to direct seven-tenths
of one percent of its GNP to international development programs and urges
Presbyterian individuals and congregations to set a good example.

"It's the Christian community that's going to have to take some leadership in
addressing the problem," she said. "To the individual, what we are saying is
that each Presbyterian should personally be out there educating congregations
and their neighbors about the growing gap (between rich and poor). That's the
first thing we should be doing."

The Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel, moderator of the 214th General Assembly of the
PC(USA), issued an informal challenge during the event that every
commissioner to next year's GA present a home-based care kit for AIDS
patients.  

Facing the issues

Churches in Africa and elsewhere often are reluctant to talk forthrightly
about sexual behavior. That's one of the factors that causes the faith
community to neglect the needs of AIDS patients and their families.

"Our unwillingness to talk frankly about a sex-related disease is killing a
continent," said Anderson M. Kawendo, projects office director for the
Blantyre Synod of the Church of Central Africa, Presbyterian.

Other factors that affect the response include a tendency among clergy to
view AIDS as a personal moral failure or a medical problem best left to
health officials.

"If you listen to the messages that were being taught or coming from the
pulpit, it was as though those who are faithful to the church are actually
immune to the virus," said Nontando Hadebe, a South African church leader.
"There was a sort of an understanding that nothing would happen, that AIDS is
something really outside the church."

In Kenya, some churches are burning, rather than distributing, condoms. In
Cameroon, a national Presbyterian Church curriculum for youth and adults
called condoms "a tool of the devil."

Another common problem, Hadebe said, is that "many women, whenever they come
forth and say, 'I'm HIV-positive,' are blamed and stigmatized."

Officials said the PC(USA) is working closely with its 164 partner churches
in 92 countries in responding to the crisis. A WMD AIDS Task Team has been
formed to decide how best to support the partner churches. The denomination
is hiring AIDS consultants to work in western Africa and southern and eastern
Africa (the first in on the job, the other not yet hired, according to the
International Health Ministries Office Web site), and reaching out to other
Christian organizations working overseas, looking for ways to collaborate. 

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