"Keeping the Promise": HIV/AIDS, Franciscans and global solidarity
The HIV/AIDS pandemic remains one of the greatest challenges confronting the human family. With its publication of the most recent trends and statistics, UNAIDS acknowledges that this global pandemic touches the entire human family and continues to claim innocent lives. Limited progress has been made in the delivery of antiretrovirals and medicines to treat opportunistic infections in remote and resource-limited parts of the world, but HIV infection rates continue to increase. Most significantly, it is the poor, women and girls, and people who are marginalized within their societies that are at greatest risk of infection. Despite the many challenges that the HIV/AIDS pandemic presents, individuals, families and communities continue to face these with courage, hope and compassion.
Causes for concern:
Today more than 40 million brothers and sisters aged 15-49 are living with HIV/AIDS. Of these, more than 17 million are women and over two million are children under 15 years of age. Two thirds of all people living with the virus are in sub-Saharan Africa where 77 per cent of all new infections are among women and young girls. In addition, HIV/AIDS has orphaned more than 15 million children worldwide and could exceed 40 million by 2020 if current trends continue.
HIV rates among doctors, nurses, teachers and other professionals continue to outpace the number of new recruits and are creating serious problems in countries with the highest rates of infection, particularly in southern Africa.
Agricultural production has also been adversely affected because of the alarmingly high rates of deaths among the rural poor. This decreased production capacity is contributing in unforeseen ways to increased food insecurity in parts of southern and eastern Africa. In a number of Asian and Latin American countries, lack of public awareness, stigma and discrimination and a slow response by governments have done little to help slow the rapid increase in HIV infections.
Poverty and race continue to be important factors in the spread of HIV/AIDS in North America and Western Europe, where a disproportionate number of peoples of African descent or from Latin America, especially women, are affected. In addition, the new antiretroviral therapies readily available to people living in Western Europe and North America have created a false sense of security and invulnerability and have, perhaps, inadvertently contributed to increased rates of infection among certain groups.
Causes for hope:
In the face of many challenges, people of great courage, hope and compassion have to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Many of these efforts are led by people living with HIV and AIDS.
However, much more can and must be done by pharmaceutical manufacturers and patenting offices to ensure that people living in countries experiencing a national health emergency can gain access to quality, sustainable and affordable medicines in a timely and effective manner.
Governments are providing significant funding for bilateral and international efforts to combat HIV/AIDS but they too can and must do more . Specifically, greater support should be provided to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Agencies involved in prevention education have helped increase awareness and prevent further spread of HIV/AIDS. However, greater cooperation is needed between agencies with varying, and at times contradictory, ethical visions.
HIV/AIDS touches the core of human experience; it is most frequently transmitted through intimate sexual acts that are not publicly discussed in some societies or religious groups. The taboos associated with human sexuality must be understood and respectfully and carefully approached if the cultural and religious 'instruments' available within any given society are to become forces for positive change in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
It is only through such collaborative and culturally sensitive efforts that the human family will demonstrate its commitment to the promotion of the human person, irrespective of gender, religion, ethnicity or social or geographical location.
Franciscans and the fight against HIV/AIDS:
The Franciscan family is actively involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS throughout the world. Brothers and sisters at the grassroots level manage hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and other medical centres where people living with HIV/AIDS are treated with dignity and respect.
In Boksburg, South Africa and Lome, Togo palliative care is provided for people most in need of assistance. Franciscan sisters are caring for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Ndola, Zambia and Gbagbam, Côte d'Ivoire.
In Bangkok, Thailand and New Delhi, India, Franciscan men and women, religious and laity, are reaching out through medical centres and local parish communities to provide care, solace and a spiritual home to those infected with or affected by HIV/AIDS. People living with HIV/AIDS participate in many of these activities and provide models of hope and courage to all.
Franciscans International is currently working together with the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance and other faith-based and non-government organisations, governments, pharmaceutical companies and others of good will to ensure that all people gain access to life-saving medications.
In these and other ways, we, the members of the Franciscan family, commit ourselves to keep the promise to work and pray ceaselessly so that the dignity of all people, particularly those living with or affected by HIV/AIDS, is respected.
Francis of Assisi considered his encounters with the marginalized, whether it be by forces of poverty or disease, to be privileged moments in his life - moments of truth, justice, grace and transformation. Can it be any different for those of us who lay claim to the Franciscan vision of a world made new and who are committed to keeping the promise?
