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[ Back to index of March articles ] Fighting AIDS
With the HIV/AIDS pandemic casting a long shadow over Africa, four members of the Anglican Church on that continent spoke of their part in the fight against the disease. Visiting Washington, D.C., in January to formally establish a partnership between the diocese and the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, primate of the CPSA, the Right Rev. David Beetge, bishop of the South African diocese of Highveld, Nema Aluku, the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa's program coordinator for HIV/AIDS and the Rev. Colin Jones, director of HIV/AIDS ministries for the province of Southern Africa, gathered on Jan. 29 before a crowd of 90 observers at the National Cathedral School, to discuss the devastation the virus is causing and what might be done to stem the hemorrhaging of human life. "One of the things that makes our job so difficult is just the sheer scale of it," Jones said. "When one starts hearing statistics, one wants to just pack up and go home, quite honestly." The statistics are staggering: Of the approximately 40 million people infected with the HIV/AIDS virus worldwide, 70 percent live in sub-Saharan Africa, Ndungane said. In South Africa alone, he added, around 600 people die of the disease each day. In parts of his diocese of 3 million, half the population is infected, Beetge said. He pictures the pandemic as an invisible line dividing congregations in half, he said, and imagines how that will curtail the community's potential.
With the deaths come social breakdown, the panel members said, citing households headed by orphaned children. "Meeting these children you ask them, 'Where is your mother?'" Ndungane said. "'She's dead.' Where is your father? 'He's dead.' Who's looking after you? 'Grandmother.' What are you going to do when grandmother's dead? 'I don't know.' "Grandparents - in their mourning, in their frailty, in their old age, in their poverty - have got to look after these children," he said. As well as the death and devastation the disease leaves in its wake, there is a more insidious problem to overcome, Ndungane said: stigma. "Stigma is a major issue," he said. "And to some degree we as churches have got funny theologies of prosperity: 'If God loves you, all goes well with you.' We are challenging the Christian communities that HIV/AIDS is not a punishment from God. It is a disease, like any disease: a disease that is manageable, a disease that is treatable. Shout it from the rooftops that HIV/AIDS is not a punishment from God!" "We ourselves as a church have often perpetuated a theology of punishment and a God of vindictiveness," Jones said. "There's much of our theology that needs to be abandoned."
To try to combat the stigma of being tested for HIV/AIDS, Ndungane got tested for the disease. He chose to take the test in a crowded clinic in one of the townships, he said, and relied on "bush radio" to do the rest. "More and more people came," he said. "And the media came with their cameras. They felt, here is the leadership of the church, identifying with us." "There used to be an environment where we didn't talk about [AIDS]," Jones said. "That is changing very rapidly now. It is no longer one of the deep dark secrets of the deep dark continent." If the fight is to be successful, strategic alliances of all kinds must be formed, Ndungane said. These include partnerships between businesses, government and the church, as well as between countries. He urged panel attendees to advocate increased U.S. contributions to the United Nations' Global Fund to Fight AIDS and the full funding of President George W. Bush's promised $15 billion international campaign to combat the disease. Ndungane also said the church needed to emphasize the
need for healthy relationships, where men treat women with respect, and
"move away from the patriarchy of which we as a church are so guilty." Panel members have been engaged in ongoing discussions with pharmaceutical companies in an effort to make the drugs more affordable, Jones said. And Aluku pointed out that while drugs to fight the virus exist, they also need to be accessible to those in need, by being both affordable and locally available. "I think the issue we have today is to find methodologies
to have people access those drugs," she said. "I know the differences donations can make at the grassroots level," Beetge said. "It's not a question of too little. If everybody contributed, we could do so much more." "The most important thing is for us to do something - each one of us to do something," Ndungane said. "Remember, it is little drops of water that chip a rock away." Contact Lucy Chumbley at lchumbley@edow.org [ Back to index of March articles ]
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Working
to take the stigma out of the disease is one positive thing people can
contribute to the fight against AIDS, he said, but there is much else
to do if the tide is to be turned.