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.

Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New York, and Washington.

| Top | GBGM News | GBGM | HIV/AIDS Ministries Network |