Africa's war is now HIV/AIDS, Methodist bishop says
10/9/2003 News media contact: Linda Bloom · (646) 369-3759 · New York
Photographs are available with this report.
By Linda Bloom*
The
Nheweyembwa Orphan Trust cares for more than 900 children left orphaned
by AIDS in Dandara, Zimbabwe. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose. Photo
number 03-342, Accompanies UMNS #484, 10/9/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
Methodist
Bishop Mvume Dandala (right), chief executive of the All-Africa
Conference of Churches, co-officiates at an Oct. 5 communion service at
Riverside Church in New York with the Rev. James Forbes Jr., Riverside’s
senior minister. A UMNS photo by John C. Goodwin. Photo number 03-340,
Accompanies UMNS #484, 10/9/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
Methodist
Bishop Mvume Dandala, chief executive of the All-Africa Conference of
Churches, discusses the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa during an Oct. 5
breakfast at Riverside Church in New York. A UMNS photo by John C.
Goodwin. Photo number 03-339, Accompanies UMNS #484, 10/9/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
The
Nheweyembwa Orphan Trust cares for more than 900 children left orphaned
by AIDS in Dandara, Zimbabwe. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose. Photo
number 03-341, Accompanies UMNS #484, 10/9/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
NEW YORK (UMNS) - Bishop Mvume Dandala once visited a small village in Mozambique populated only by elderly women.
Their
husbands had been killed during the country's long civil war, and their
children had fled, also because of the war. The village had no future.
In
the same way, the HIV/AIDS pandemic is "killing the tomorrows" of
people across the entire African continent, the former presiding bishop
of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa said Oct. 5, at a breakfast
at Riverside Church in New York. Each day, 7,000 Africans die from
HIV/AIDS.
Dandala, who recently became general secretary of the
All-Africa Conference of Churches, came to the United States under the
sponsorship of Africa Action, a Washington-based Africa advocacy
organization. He was among the participants in a series of public
teach-ins in six U.S. cities in connection with the organization's
Africa's Right to Health Campaign, which focuses on the HIV/AIDS
pandemic. He also co-officiated the World Communion Sunday service at
Riverside Church with its senior minister, the Rev. James Forbes Jr.,
and former pastor William Sloane Coffin.
Because of continuing
conflicts on the continent, the bishop noted that it is hard for
Westerners to see "the powerful things that are happening in Africa."
But
in this post-apartheid era, "it is exciting to see more and more
African leaders committing themselves to the paths of democracy,"
Dandala said. To hear those leaders talk about working toward good
governments, political accountability and social systems that will put
food on everyone's table is a major advancement for the continent, he
added.
The way nearby heads of state negotiated the peaceful
departure of former president Charles Taylor from Liberia this summer is
an example of how this newfound cooperation can work, according to
Dandala.
When South Africans finally were freed of the apartheid
system, they knew they had to set up an effective government and deal
with substantial issues such as poverty. "But none of us expected the
tragedy of HIV/AIDS, which decimated the continent," he said.
Addressing
the tragedy requires practical assistance, not condemnation, from the
churches. "All we ask is that our friends with the church should walk
with us in this great battle," Dandala said.
In Africa, however,
the battle involves more than access to medicine or treatment. "We
cannot fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic without giving equal attention to the
issue of poverty," the bishop explained. "Until and unless we face up
to the poverty issue … all our strategies will fall short."
When
some one suffers from poor nutrition, for example, the toxic effects
from drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS are heightened, he pointed out.
In
many parts of Africa, the health care system is so poor that instead of
being a tool for treatment it actually becomes a transmission agent -
through the re-use of needles, for example - to help spread the virus,
Dandala declared.
The All-Africa Conference of Churches, based in
Nairobi, Kenya, has taken several steps to deal with the HIV/AIDS
pandemic. During the past two years, it has sponsored three
well-attended conferences that produced materials regarding the crisis
for member churches to use. Currently, the organization is in the
process of identifying which of its 169 national denominational members
needs additional help to do "cutting-edge work" on HIV/AIDS, the bishop
said.
Another of the organization's concerns is that only about
20 percent of the money Africa receives to fight the disease goes toward
research and that research not sponsored by major pharmaceutical
companies often receives no funding at all. A goal of the conference is
to equip the churches to address this and other "powerful moral
questions for this pandemic," Dandala said.
He believes the
United States, as a nation, "needs to take the global fight against
HIV/AIDS a little more seriously," he said. And if churches can
interpret the pandemic as a moral issue, "I think that would be a
powerful thing."
Most Africans committed to battling the effects
of HIV/AIDS "are ordinary churchgoers who live with this pain every
day," he pointed out. He suggested that U.S. churches could form
partnerships with African churches to join in the fight. Dandala said
his organization could help forge the links for those partnerships.
More information on the All-Africa Conference of Churches can be found at www.aacc-ceta.org, the organization's Web site.
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*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer in New York.