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Note #7738 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

AIDS is on menu at Health Ministries breakfast
GA03048

AIDS is on menu at Health Ministries breakfast

PC(USA) coordinators in Africa deliver 'message of hope'

by John Filiatreau

DENVER, May 27 - The two women who coordinate Presbyterian Church (USA)
efforts against AIDS in Africa brought a familiar but harrowing story to the
annual International Health Breakfast early Tuesday.

	Janet Guyer, the AIDS coordinator for southern and eastern Africa,
and Carol Weinberg, the coordinator for central and west Africa, began with
the observation that 14,000 people are infected with HIV/AIDS every day - 95
percent of them in developing countries, most in sub-Saharan Africa. Of the
worldwide total of 41 million people with the virus, they said, more than 29
million are in Africa, where infection rates are still rising and the disease
is "wiping out a generation."

	While showing heartening slides of Presbyterians and others engaged
in AIDS-education and -prevention programs in Africa, they recounted the
sorrowful statistics: Ethiopia has five million AIDS orphans, Malawi nearly
one million, Congo 2.7 million.

	Guyer, a PC(USA) pastor, asked rhetorically, "How can the church be
the church in Africa in response to AIDS?" She and Weinberg, a nurse,
described a number of programs in which the PC(USA) works through partner
churches in Africa that are becoming ever more deeply involved in education,
prevention and orphan-care programs.

	"We want to focus on what the (partner) churches are doing," Weinberg
said. "We're just lifting that up this morning."

	The co-hosts of the event were the Medical Benevolence Foundation
(MBF) and the International Health Ministries program area of the Worldwide
Ministries Division.

	Pam Ator, associate executive director of MBF, pointed out how
PC(USA)-related Project C.U.R.E. was able to respond to an appeal from Taiwan
for surgical masks needed there for medical personnel caring for patients
sickened by the SARS virus.

	Project C.U.R.E., a PC(USA)-related program that collects tons of
surplus and discarded medical supplies in the United States each year and
ships them to parts of the world where they are desperately needed, secured
5,000 masks and delivered them to Taiwan in a matter of days. 

	"I am not sure it gets any better than this," Ator said. "I'm not
sure God would have asked for anything more - or expected anything less."

	She pointed out that the money that pays for the foundation's work
represents "gifts from hundreds of Presbyterian congregations and
individuals."

	The breakfast organizers distributed information on a number of Extra
Commitment Opportunity (ECO) accounts through which Presbyterians can support
the fight against AIDS, among them: ECO#051674, AIDS Orphans and Vulnerable
Children in Africa; ECO#051700, Home-Based Care Kits in Africa; and ECO#
051701, AIDS Mother-to-Child Transmission Prevention.

	Guyer said the experience of Uganda, which reduced its AIDS infection
rate in adults from 15 percent to 5 percent, proves the efficacy of the "ABC"
approach, which promotes (A)bstinence, (B)eing faithful, and (C)ondom use. In
Uganda, she noted, it was the churches that led the ABC campaign.

	"That's it, that's my message: AIDS is preventable," she said.
"That's my message of hope."

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