wfn.org | Africa's war is now HIV/AIDS, Methodist bishop says

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Oct. 9, 2003   News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212)870-38037New York
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NOTE: Photographs are available with this report.

By Linda Bloom*

NEW YORK (UMNS) - Bishop Mvume Dandala once visited a small village in
Mozambique populated only by elderly women.

Their husbands had been killed during the country's long civil war, and their
children had fled, also because of the war. The village had no future.

In the same way, the HIV/AIDS pandemic is "killing the tomorrows" of people
across the entire African continent, the former presiding bishop of the
Methodist Church of Southern Africa said Oct. 5, at a breakfast at Riverside
Church in New York. Each day, 7,000 Africans die from HIV/AIDS.

Dandala, who recently became general secretary of the All-Africa Conference
of Churches, came to the United States under the sponsorship of Africa
Action, a Washington-based Africa advocacy organization. He was among the
participants in a series of public teach-ins in six U.S. cities in connection
with the organization's Africa's Right to Health Campaign, which focuses on
the HIV/AIDS pandemic. He also co-officiated the World Communion Sunday
service at Riverside Church with its senior minister, the Rev. James Forbes
Jr., and former pastor William Sloane Coffin.

Because of continuing conflicts on the continent, the bishop noted that it is
hard for Westerners to see "the powerful things that are happening in
Africa." 

But in this post-apartheid era, "it is exciting to see more and more African
leaders committing themselves to the paths of democracy," Dandala said. To
hear those leaders talk about working toward good governments, political
accountability and social systems that will put food on everyone's table is a
major advancement for the continent, he added.

The way nearby heads of state negotiated the peaceful departure of former
president Charles Taylor from Liberia this summer is an example of how this
newfound cooperation can work, according to Dandala.

When South Africans finally were freed of the apartheid system, they knew
they had to set up an effective government and deal with substantial issues
such as poverty. "But none of us expected the tragedy of HIV/AIDS, which
decimated the continent," he said.

Addressing the tragedy requires practical assistance, not condemnation, from
the churches. "All we ask is that our friends with the church should walk
with us in this great battle," Dandala said.

In Africa, however, the battle involves more than access to medicine or
treatment. "We cannot fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic without giving equal
attention to the issue of poverty," the bishop explained. "Until and unless
we face up to the poverty issue ... all our strategies will fall short."

When some one suffers from poor nutrition, for example, the toxic effects
from drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS are heightened, he pointed out.

In many parts of Africa, the health care system is so poor that instead of
being a tool for treatment it actually becomes a transmission agent - through
the re-use of needles, for example - to help spread the virus, Dandala
declared.

The All-Africa Conference of Churches, based in Nairobi, Kenya, has taken
several steps to deal with the HIV/AIDS pandemic. During the past two years,
it has sponsored three well-attended conferences that produced materials
regarding the crisis for member churches to use. Currently, the organization
is in the process of identifying which of its 169 national denominational
members needs additional help to do "cutting-edge work" on HIV/AIDS, the
bishop said.

Another of the organization's concerns is that only about 20 percent of the
money Africa receives to fight the disease goes toward research and that
research not sponsored by major pharmaceutical companies often receives no
funding at all. A goal of the conference is to equip the churches to address
this and other "powerful moral questions for this pandemic," Dandala said.

He believes the United States, as a nation, "needs to take the global fight
against HIV/AIDS a little more seriously," he said. And if churches can
interpret the pandemic as a moral issue, "I think that would be a powerful
thing."

Most Africans committed to battling the effects of HIV/AIDS "are ordinary
churchgoers who live with this pain every day," he pointed out. He suggested
that U.S. churches could form partnerships with African churches to join in
the fight. Dandala said his organization could help forge the links for those
partnerships.

More information on the All-Africa Conference of Churches can be found at
www.aacc-ceta.org, the organization's Web site.

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*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer in New York.

 
 

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