AIDS in Africa

The AIDS crisis in Africa

HIV/AIDS Travel Study Seminar to South Africa and Malawi [8-28-07]

February 22 to March 7, 2008

Apply now

Contact Amanda Craft at acraft@ctr.pcusa.org for more information.

Participants in this travel/study seminar will:

	Visit South Africa and Malawi, two countries seriously affected by HIV/AIDS and responding very differently to the issues.
	Listen to our partners in mission and ministry as they share with us the impact of HIV/AIDS at the denominational and local levels.
	Learn from people directly involved with ministries responding to HIV/AIDS in their countries, communities and congregations.
	Pray and study with our partners as we seek to discern how God is calling us to respond.
	Plan and strategize concrete ways we can make HIV/AIDS a focus of concern for our congregations.

Find an application form and more details at http://pcusa.org/peacemaking/ya/ya.htm#seminar

The Rev. W. Mark Koenig
Coordinator
Presbyterian Peacemaking Program
100 Witherspoon Street
Louisville, KY 40202
888-728-7228, ext. 5936
www.pcusa.org/peacemaking

Rock star Bono tells the National Prayer Breakfast:

"It’s not about charity ... It’s about justice."
[2-3-06]

Speaking to the Washington crowd at the National Prayer Breakfast, which included no less than the President, Bono spoke about the urgent need for help to Africa as it deals with the "the leprosy of our age," AIDS.

In this gathering on Feb. 2, Bono praised the response of religious communities and of the United States to the need – when they eventually got around to paying attention. Then he went on:

But here’s the bad news. From charity to justice, the good news is yet to come. There is much more to do. There’s a gigantic chasm between the scale of the emergency and the scale of the response.

And finally, it’s not about charity after all, is it? It’s about justice.

Let me repeat that: It’s not about charity, it’s about justice.

And that’s too bad.

Because you’re good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can’t afford it.

But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment.

6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality.

Because there's no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa and, if we're honest, conclude that deep down, we really accept that Africans are equal to us. Anywhere else in the world, we wouldn’t accept it. Look at what happened in South East Asia with the Tsunami. 150, 000 lives lost to that misnomer of all misnomers, "mother nature". In Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And it’s a completely avoidable catastrophe.

It’s annoying but justice and equality are mates. Aren’t they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.

There’s more good stuff here – funny, passionate, prophetic.

Read the whole thing >>

A Continent in Despair

What's our response to the crisis of AIDS in Africa?

Jane Hanna

Jane Hanna, president of The Witherspoon Society, recently returned from a brief visit to Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

[published here on 2-20-01]

The HIV virus is a serious worldwide human affliction, particularly tragic in the poor regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Wealthy nations, with means to respond to the crisis, have largely ignored what is happening in less fortunate parts of the world. So long as the impact of uncounted deaths elsewhere goes unnoticed by those able to meet the challenge, the closer the world gets to a global calamity.

In Africa, which is suffering nearly half the world's HIV/AIDS cases (25 million people infected with the virus), the population is being restructured. The future is altered when life expectancy is reduced from 62 to 40, creating a shortage of women, and leaving millions of orphans to fend for themselves. Estimates claim that 6000 Africans die from AIDS each day while another 11,000 are infected.

During a recent visit to Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa, I learned firsthand of the impact of this disease. It is killing a generation of young adults. In its wake millions of children who have buried their parents may also bury HIV-infected younger siblings. Doctors, teachers, farmers with agricultural knowledge are being lost in countries that most need their skills. Rampant inflation, joblessness, lack of medical care, male-dominated cultures with a history of polygamy, the Apartheid system of migrant labor, refugees from wars, droughts and floods -- all fuel this epidemic and prevent significant response. Ignorance and denial have also intensified the spread of the disease.

In each church where we worshiped and met with members of congregations, we heard stories of how communities suffer the consequences of poverty and disease. Teenagers shared the pain of losing friends. Government officials spoke of the sparse resources available for response to this crisis. In the Eastern Cape women from the former Ciskei & Transkei homelands use their centuriesold beading skills to make aids pins. People wear them as recognition of the suffering that has engulfed their communities.

In Harare, Zimbabwe, we visited Lovemore House where a Presbyterian congregation provides housing and education for a dozen boys who had been struggling to survive on the streets. Their stories are typical of the thousands of children left to fend for themselves as poverty and disease afflict their families. When fathers die his possessions go to another male relative, often leaving the widow and her children homeless and without economic means. Even where extended family nurture has always been the norm, poverty often precludes the ability to care for additional children.

The orphan population in Zimbabwe grows by about 60,000 a year. It is estimated the country will have 1.1 million orphans by 2005. These statistics indicate how AIDS is altering history in Africa, and indeed the world, to a degree not seen since the Black Death of the Middle Ages.

The US has access to expensive life-extending drugs, which manufacturers are refusing to supply at lower cost to poor countries. India and Brazil have announced plans to manufacture generic drugs they can better afford, despite WTO agreements that protect the patents of drug companies. The South African government recently announced plans to provide medical treatment for pregnant women with HIV. This would dramatically reduce mother-to-child transmission of the virus to an estimated 70,000 babies in South Africa annually, either born with HIV or contracting it shortly after birth through breast feeding. Given the extent of the affliction, these are very small measures.

How should we respond? God cares for all the world; so must we. We need to understand the immensity of the crisis and become informed about the work the PCUSA is doing with African partner churches. Active support of debt-relief measures to re-channel money into health and education is vital. We must also lobby vigorously to provide affordable medicine to poverty-stricken countries. A year's medicine, at the lowest cost possible, is still more than a year's wages for most Africans. At US pharmaceutical costs, it is impossible for impoverished African nations to do any more than accept the premature death of those already infected.