In This Issue
- End the culture of impunity
- All Kenyans have a right to safety and security
- Uganda's education curriculum review causes public outcry
- Hakimani team travel to Kisumu and Mombasa for peacebuilding trainings
- The world to mark 20th World Aids Day as the number of AIDS orphans swells
The world marks 20th World Aids Day as the number of Aids orphans soars
This year of 2008, 1st December marks World AIDS Day for the 20th time. The theme is Leadership, under the slogan, Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise!
Twenty years have seen significant inroads, with life-prolonging drugs, more funds for prevention and treatment, more knowledge leading to increased awareness and openness and less stigma. Such developments may lead some to wonder whether AIDS - of all the urgent challenges facing Africa - still deserves privileged attention.
The 2008 United Nations statistics leave little room for doubt. AIDS continues to be the leading cause of death in the continent, home to 22 million HIV-positive or two-thirds of the global total of 33 million. In the developing world, although improved access to antiretroviral therapy means that fewer people are dying, treatment is reaching less than one-third of those eligible. The number of AIDS orphans has swollen and their myriad needs are scarcely being met. Millions in Africa are still mired in deprivation and ignorance that put them at high risk of contracting HIV. As much dedication as ever is needed to turn the tide against the pandemic. Yet why dedicate energy, resources and expertise to what seems one problem among so many?
A professor, who gives courses on AIDS to religious and seminarians, writes: I get a feeling that more and more, the issue of HIV/AIDS is getting less importance among students as well as in society. It makes me really worried. I don't know whether this is my own personal feeling or has to do with the reality. According to the experience of AJAN, this is the reality. At Jesuit houses of formation, some raise the question whether AIDS deserves such attention any more (and a network to focus on it) because it is no longer an emergency.
Setting up AJAN in 2002, the Jesuit Superiors of Africa and Madagascar (JESAM) clearly made the pandemic an urgent priority for the Society of Jesus in Africa, in the firm belief that Jesuits have a unique contribution to bring to the struggle against HIV and AIDS. AJAN is a highly flexible response and, like all our major ministries, the commitment is long-term. Even when interest shifts and resources dry up, the Society of Jesus is committed to facing AIDS until it is no more.
Much work is already being done in nearly 30 sub-Saharan countries across Africa. Coordinated and supported by AJAN, Jesuits are providing leadership in communities, schools and universities, in parishes and families: integral support and pastoral care; education for orphans; advocacy for real universal access to treatment; value-based education as a solid basis for prevention; social, cultural and theological research. In fact, treatment, good nutrition, pastoral care and support are still far from accessible for many who need them.
We are called not to replicate, much less to compete, but rather
- to reach out with charity to the most vulnerable and forgotten
- to improve the responses to HIV and AIDS in Africa in coverage, quality and depth
- to educate in every way so that Africa is ever better equipped to overcome AIDS
- to assure leadership of vision, innovation, action
- to bring faith, life and hope.
Maintaining a strong commitment to education is crucial. The African Assistancy's New Apostolic Vision underlines sound education at all levels (primary, secondary, tertiary, in our social and spiritual centres, and in our parishes) as the sine qua non condition for any sustainable and durable development of Africa and the royal way through which Africa could tackle the many challenges of today's globalization, among them the AIDS pandemic.
In taking the lead in the struggle against AIDS, AJAN walks in the footsteps of its patrons: Blessed Anuarite, who devoted her religious life to education until her martyrdom 44 years ago; St Aloysius Gonzaga who was a student at the Roman College when he cared for plague victims in the bitter winter of 1591.
It is good to conclude this message with the wise words of our elders: Let your heart treasure what I have to say and you will live; acquire wisdom, acquire understanding (Proverbs 4: 4-5) and carry on leading and keeping the promise.