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UN adviser urges church leaders to take HIV test
by Bill Bowder
 Visas agreed: the Watoto Children’s Choir, Ugandan AIDS orphans, will have visas for their British tour in January, the Home Office minister Lord West confirmed last week, after questions from Lord Roberts of Llandudno and others. It was feared that new rules would require £20,000 of CRB checks for their UK hosts. Only "evidence to show that someone has looked into the safety of the young people while they are here" was necessary, Lord West said. The chour tours the UK annually. www.watoto.com |
| CHURCH LEADERS should consider being tested for HIV to help banish the stigma attached to testing, an expert at UNAIDS (the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS) has said in advance of World AIDS Day next Monday.
A Lambeth Palace spokeswoman, responding on Wednesday, said that African bishops had already had themselves tested as an example to others, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury believed that church leaders should take a lead in educating people about the issues.
In part of a statement expected on Monday, Dr Williams will say: “Recognising that people living with HIV is us not them, whether its leaders and congregations, congregations and ‘outsiders’, it’s us. It’s all of our business . . . church leaders and church congregations taking responsibilities for educating the wider public.”
Sally Smith, the Geneva-based UNAIDS partnership adviser who called for the testing, said: “This is an important way for religious and community leaders to break down the stigma often associated with HIV and testing.”
Everyone should know their HIV status, to make informed health decisions, she said in an interview published in full on the Church Times website today.
She quoted the Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Revd Mark Hanson, who had said in Mexico, on the publication of the latest UNAIDS report in August: “I am absolutely convinced that we as religious leaders and we in the religious community that so shunned and shamed people with HIV and struggling with AIDS . . . must begin first by engaging in public acts of repentance, because, absent of public acts of repentance, I fear our words will not be trusted.”
Ms Smith said that churches could show their commitment by recognising that people were living with HIV in their locality, and possibly in their congregation; and working in partnership with a local organisation of people living with HIV.
Churches were well placed to deliver education, care, and services, and had been among the first to respond to the HIV epidemic.
“Some of those responses were extremely positive, exceptional and outstanding, and others, negative and stigmatising.”
She urged congregations to reach out to HIV-positive people; to listen, and allow them to lead the church’s response. “Partner with organisations such as INERELA+, the international network of religious leaders living with and personally affected by HIV. Call for zero tolerance of stigma towards people living with HIV.”
Churches should work with people and families living with HIV, because as they did so, she said, stigmatising statements would be reduced, and the use of condoms might become more acceptable. Church members should find out about church statements on HIV, and ask church leaders what they had done to follow them up.
They should learn about governments’ commitments to universal access to prevention, treatment, care, and support; raise awareness of HIV in their area; and link with other community events connected with World AIDS Day; wear the symbolic red ribbon, and lobby political leaders.
Zimbabwean AVR problem. Malnutrition in Zimbabwe meant that antiretroviral (AVR) drugs for AIDS patients were now having side effects, Progressio, formerly the Catholic Institute for International Relations, said this week. People had stopped taking AVRs, either because of these effects or because of poverty, and they now faced an increased risk of death: an estimated one in seven people in Zimbabwe suffer from HIV/AIDS, Jo Barrett, Progressio’s media officer, said on Wednesday. Interview below. |
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