ONWARD Page 1 September 2003

NORTH AMERICA RESPONDS TO HIV/AIDS IN AFRICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

In the year 2000, the Board of World Mission became aware of the critical nature of the AIDS epidemic in the Province of Western Tanzania. The prevalence of HIV was 10% of the population. Testing was occasionally being done but without consent. Patients were not told of the testing or its results. HIV infection was not being publicly discussed and no prevention program was in place.

The Board of World Mission became heavily involved in the year 2001. A training program for medical, pastoral, and educational personnel was implemented. Voluntary counseling and testing was begun at the hospital and a prevention of Mother to Child transmission utilizing Viramune was initiated. An attempt was made to begin a church-based orphan project, but this failed. Later in the year, two HIV/AIDS counseling seminars were held for the pastoral staff to enable them to work with their congregations.

In the year 2002, two additional seminars were held to educate pastors’ wives on the same AIDS issues. This was an important advance as women are culturally unable to speak to man about issues dealing with sexuality. A community-based orphan project run by Moravian women to provide education, nutritional, and medical support for the communities’ orphans was begun and has continued to enlarge. Voluntary counseling and testing has been extended to four additional Moravian facilities that also are utilizing Viramune for the prevention of Mother to Child transmission of this fatal virus. A grant to provide HIV test kits for the entire Sikonge District was procured and a donation of 1,000 OraQuick HIV tests was arranged to provide testing in remote areas without laboratory facilities.

The Caribbean basin is second only to Sub-Saharan Africa in the prevalence of HIV infection. The Board of World Mission began investigating the church’s response to this epidemic in the year 2002 when questionnaires were sent to each of the Provincial offices in the Caribbean basin requesting information about the epidemic and the churches’ response.

A grant request was sent to the ”On One Stem Growing” campaign (Moravian Ministries Foundation) to fund the AIDS prevention and treatment program there. In the year 2003, representatives from the Board of World Mission visited Honduras, Nicaragua, the Eastern West Indies and Guyana speaking with church leadership, medical personnel, government officials, and the NGOs involved in the campaign against AIDS. HIV test kits as well as Viramune have been supplied to Honduras where medical and pastoral staff attended a won-week AIDS seminar presented by the government. Plans have been made for the training of the remaining pastoral staff in this country. In Nicaragua, test kits have been provided along with requested educational material for youth and young adults. Additional training sessions for the physician, pastoral staff and church membership are planned. In both the Eastern West Indies and Guyana, the medical response to the epidemic has been quite strong but both pastors and congregations need additional support to deal with this epidemic in a constructive manner. In both these provinces plans have been made to provide this support through training seminars as soon as funding permits.

The problems facing Africa and the Caribbean basin, due to the AIDS epidemic, are quite different. Not only is the situation more advanced in Africa, infrastructure needed to provide assistance is simple not present. The organizations needed to implement change must be constructed and this requires more time and effort than actual financial assistance. In the Eastern West Indies and Guyana, the situation is merely reversed. Local support organizations are present and active and funding is desperately needed to utilize them for our church to make its response more effective. Honduras and Nicaragua lie somewhere between these two extremes. In both areas the church has begun an effort working with assistance from the government and medical communities. But here also, funding is needed to strengthen this response.

William Hoffman,MD