CHURCH MUST ACTIVELY FIGHT AIDS IN AFRICA,
SPEAKERS SAY

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Religious Leaders Must Provide AIDS Education in Africa

STAMFORD, Conn. – From providing information on prevention to supporting the availability of cheaper drug treatments, church leaders in Africa must become more active in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

That was the message from a generic drug provider and a bishop during the April 23-26 spring meeting of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. The presentation was organized by the board's Health and Welfare Ministries unit.

Dr. Vikash Salig, business development director of Aspen Pharmacare South Africa, spoke about the challenge of providing generic HIV/AIDS drugs to patients, and United Methodist Bishop Joseph Humper of Sierra Leone discussed the role of the church in HIV/AIDS education, prevention and care.

An estimated 6 million to 10 million people could die from AIDS in South Africa during the next 15 years, Salig said. Currently, 95 percent of the population there does not have access to drugs used to treat the disease.

By law, South African companies cannot make a generic version of a drug until it has been on the market for 20 years, leaving the multinational pharmaceutical companies with a "stranglehold" on patent rights, Salig said. Thirty-nine of those drug makers had filed suit in 1998 after another South African law allowed the government to purchase brand-name drugs at the lowest rates available anywhere.

In the wake of recent protests about the lack of drugs available to Africans dying of AIDS and support for South Africa's position by organizations such as the European Union and World Health Organization, the lawsuit was dropped on April 19. According to the New York Times, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was called upon to help broker a deal between South African President Thabo Mbeki and the drug makers.

At Aspen Pharmacare, Salig said, "Our clear focus is on producing affordable medicines that are accessible." Offering antiviral HIV/AIDS drugs at cost would mean paying only one-15th of the price currently available in South Africa, he said.

The highest-risk group is people ages 15 to 25, particularly females. And the sufferers of AIDS don't exist in a vacuum, Salig pointed out. South Africa is expected to have 800,000 children orphaned because of AIDS by 2005 and 2 million by 2010.

That is a trend all over the continent, where 70 percent of the world's HIV/AIDS cases can be found in sub-Saharan Africa. "AIDS deaths, very soon, will exceed all other deaths combined in Africa," he noted.

Salig said groups such as the Board of Global Ministries could make a significant impact on the humanitarian end of the AIDS battle. "It goes without saying that we're going to need international assistance at every front," he added.

African church leaders are caught between traditional society, "where there are certain things you can't talk about," and the current reality of the HIV/AIDS crisis, according to Humper. But he believes those traditional cultural values are elastic, not static, and "subject to changes with contemporary historical events."

Because of their influence on communities, religious and spiritual leaders must accept that the disease "threatens the existence of the present generation as well as future generations and our community," he said. The facts on how HIV/AIDS is spread also must be accepted, and tradition must be examined for its possible role in contributing to that spread. For example, tradition's impact can be seen in the practice of men marrying the wives of deceased relatives.

In Sierra Leone, the government, United Methodist Church, and World Health Organization sponsored an awareness event for World AIDS Day last December. "Collaboration between faith communities and government needs strengthening to improve the effectiveness of the overall national response to HIV/AIDS," Humper said. Both groups "have a major role in showing compassion and helping people living with HIV/AIDS to accept diseases and to live positively with HIV/AIDS," he said.

To foster involvement, more educational consultations are needed for African leaders. Said the bishop: "My personal involvement in participating in workshops and seminars on HIV/AIDS enabled me to grasp the gravity of the situation."