Challenge of deadly disease sets a double task
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
5 Dec 2004
In Africa at least the HIV/AIDS epidemic is the worst to strike anywhere since the Black Death in the fourteenth century.
The United Nations has dedicated this year to raising awareness of the suffering of girls and women, who are infected at 2.5 times the rate of men.
22 million people have died with AIDS since it appeared in the 1980s and 42 million live with HIV/AIDS. China and India are also being hit badly. By 2025 AIDS will have killed 31,000,000 in India and 18,000,000 in China.
Papua New Guinea probably stands on the brink of a catastrophe, with dramatic consequences for development. The official number living with HIV/AIDS there is 16,000, certainly an under-estimation and the infection rate for the 14-19 year old girls is escalating steeply.
The suffering of children from this pandemic is almost too much to grasp. There are now 15,000,000 orphans mostly in Africa. The number increased by 5,200,000 in 2003 alone. By 2010 it is estimated that sub-Saharan Africa will have 18.4 million orphans, often cared for by impoverished grandparents.
Humanitarian agencies are trying to respond in this immense crisis. Caritas Australia, with the help of the Australian government, has just commenced a new five year programme to train health workers, educate school teachers and create three new HIV care centres in P.N.G.
Naturally the Catholic Church is part of this co-operative effort to combat suffering and in fact, 26.7% of all centres in the world dedicated to treating HIV/AIDS are Catholic centres.
But the Church is often criticised for its opposition to the use of condoms. Sometimes it is even suggested that this policy has caused more deaths. What are the facts?
Recently Cardinal Wamala from Uganda was in Australia, the Archbishop of Kampala who has often been criticised for his opposition to condoms. But the rate of HIV/AIDS infection in Uganda is much lower than in many African countries. Why?
The programme for self-control or abstinence by the unmarried and faithfulness in marriage is led by the wife of the Ugandese President. When the main emphasis is on condoms, irresponsible sexual activity is encouraged. This is the reason for the different statistics.
Pope John Paul II emphasised that the drama of AIDS is “a pathology of the Spirit”. No such human crisis can be solved by a rubber contraption.
Some years ago I was next to a health worker returning by air from West Africa. He explained that in his area condoms were expensive, in short supply, often of poor quality, with many hostile to using them.
AIDS is transmitted in three ways; by blood, from a mother to her unborn baby, and by sexual contact. Self control is the first part of the answer.
In the face of this unique challenge, we have a double task: to help all those suffering and to work effectively to retard the spread of the disease.
