wfn.org | Presidential AIDS mission leads to $100 million proposal

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

July 22, 1999 News media contact: Thomas S.
McAnally*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn. 10-28-31-71B{382}

By Dean Snyder*

WASHINGTON (UMNS) -- The Clinton administration is recommending a $100
million federal budget increase to fight AIDS worldwide in response to the
report of a team, including a United Methodist bishop, that visited Africa
to study the impact of the pandemic there.

When Vice President Albert Gore announced the proposed funding increase at
the White House July 19, he was accompanied by Bishop Felton Edwin May of
Washington and other members of the Presidential Mission on Children
Orphaned by AIDS, who toured three African countries in March and April on
behalf of the president.  The funding increase would double U.S. AIDS
prevention efforts in Africa, according to the vice president.

"Little in human memory can rival the AIDS crisis in Africa. Forty million
children will lose one or both parents in Africa over the next 10 years,"
Gore said. He quoted South African Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, who was
also present for the announcement, by calling the battle against the spread
of AIDS a "holy war."

In an interview following Gore's announcement, May applauded the Clinton
administration's efforts and called for greater investment in African
economic development as well.

"This (AIDS) is the number one plague of the millenium," May said.  "Vice
President Gore made a bold and holy commitment to the future health of this
planet. The $100 million he announced today will begin to address the issue
affecting orphans, one-parent families and the drastic drop in the median
age of persons in sub-Saharan Africa.

"However, we still need to provide comparable funding for economic
development and higher education for our African neighbors or poverty will
continue to feed the spread of disease, especially HIV-AIDS, throughout the
African continent today and other continents tomorrow," he added. 

The presidential mission's 30-page report described AIDS in sub-Saharan
Africa as "a plague of biblical proportions."  More than 22 million adults
and a million children are living with HIV, and another 11,000 -- one every
eight seconds -- are infected daily in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the
report.  

"As goes Africa, so will go India, Southeast Asia and the Newly Independent
States (of the former Soviet Union), and by 2005, more than 100 million
people worldwide will be HIV-positive," the report said.

Encouraged by its visit to Uganda, where HIV rates have been cut in half as
a result of aggressive governmental and church action, the presidential
mission recommended a plan to contain AIDS through education and other
preventive efforts, to provide home and community care to victims, and to
support extended families in caring for children orphaned by AIDS.

The report also asked the U.S. government to hold a summit of African and
American religious leaders to discuss the role of faith communities in
preventing AIDS. "In Uganda and Senegal, the involvement of religious
communities and leaders had a dramatic impact on the ability of these two
countries to reduce HIV incidence and to maintain it at a low level over
time," the report said.

May emphasized that the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries has been
addressing the pandemic of AIDS in Africa through "notable missional
programs and prophetic resolutions in collaboration with governmental and
non-governmental partners" for more than a decade.

Following his participation in the presidential mission during Holy Week and
Easter, March 27 to April 5, May led a delegation of Baltimore-Washington
Conference leaders in teaching a June pastors' school in Zimbabwe. The
school included AIDS awareness training for more than 200 Zimbabwean United
Methodist pastors.

The school was the first in the country where a large group of clergy
devoted so much attention to AIDS prevention strategies, according to
Patrick Osewe, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development's
HIV-AIDS office for Zimbabwe.

Other participants in the presidential mission included Sandra Thurman,
director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, Rep. Carolyn
Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Michigan), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) and Rep.
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas). The offices of Sens. Orrin Hatch, Jesse Helms
and Edward Kennedy were represented. Documentary producer Rory Kennedy
participated in the mission but was not present for the vice president's
announcement.

#  #  #

*Snyder is director of communications for the Baltimore-Washington
Conference of the United Methodist Church.

______________
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