Faith leaders working with HIV programs have adapted well during the COVID-19 pandemic

Leaders of the global response to HIV and AIDS who gathered in Montreal for the International AIDS Conference praised religious leaders for their contribution to the fight against the four-decade-old pandemic.

“Faith leaders have helped us stay on track. You have given hope to millions of people living with HIV and to HIV activists with the power of prayer and faith as we go. needed most,” Vinay Saldanha, director of the U.S. liaison office for the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), said at a pre-conference meeting of interfaith religious leaders on July 27.

UNAIDS’ report to the biennial international conference highlighted how years of steady progress against the disease had struggled during the crisis caused by COVID-19, mass displacement and several international conflicts.

“The report contains some very bad news,” said Matthew Kavanagh, Special Advisor to the Executive Director for Policy, Advocacy and Knowledge at UNAIDS, in a speech to the interfaith gathering. “But there’s also really good news, because we’ve built community, because we’ve built resilience, because faith leaders have come together with community leaders and people living with HIV and built a response capable of responding in times of crisis.”

Attendees at the interfaith conference heard reports of how faith-based HIV projects had quickly adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic. The church-sponsored Luke Commission healthcare system in Eswatini, for example, which was founded in response to the AIDS crisis in what was then Swaziland, cared for 90% of seriously ill patients. of the COVID-19 of the small African kingdom.

The pandemic has exacerbated the challenges of HIV in many regions.

“After just two years of COVID, more than 10 million children worldwide have been orphaned by COVID. Two out of three of them are adolescents, and they are at increased risk of sexual violence, incidents related to HIV, mental health issues and adolescent pregnancy,” said Dr. Susan Hillis, senior technical advisor for the faith-based and community initiative of the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known under the name of PEPFAR, during a presentation at the interfaith gathering.

For several years, the Vatican has sponsored an initiative to increase children’s access to HIV testing, diagnostics and medication. Bringing together pharmaceutical and medical device executives with researchers and religious activists, the effort has yielded good results. COVID-19 delayed that effort, but a major participant in the effort told the interfaith gathering that the pandemic could not be blamed for every failure.

“Our progress was stalled even before COVID. Children had 25% less access to healthcare than adults. It shows a lack of political power. hands when the Global Fund (to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria) decides program priorities There are no chairs for children, so they are often left behind No one is against children, but it’s shocking how easily people forget to include children,” said Chip Lyons, president and CEO of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

Some new models of ministry are working well. Hillis presented an encouraging report at the interfaith meeting on a program in Nigeria’s Benue State, in which churches are sponsoring baby showers for pregnant women and their partners. It builds on an existing tradition of religious communities celebrating pregnancy by blessing pregnant women during worship. The new practice also involves male partners and offers on-site testing for a variety of health conditions, including HIV status. Those who test positive are referred for antiretroviral treatment, which will usually prevent transmission of HIV to the newborn.

Hillis said the program would then expand to mosques as well.

Attendees at the interfaith gathering learned how churches have maintained strong HIV prevention, testing and treatment programs even in the midst of war in Ukraine.

“When Russia invaded Ukraine this year, the first people who came to help us were from the churches. They delivered medicine, they gave us psychological support and they trained the soldiers on the importance of testing. Churches organized shelters especially for people living with HIV, as well as members of the gay community, because they were not accepted in the general population shelters,” said Valeriia Rachynska , leader of 100% Life, a Ukrainian group that is the largest organization for people living with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Jacek Tyszko, senior adviser on religious engagement in the Geneva office of UNAIDS, reported how the Catholic Church in Poland, which has hosted hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, invited staff from the Ukrainian Catholic Church coming to Poland to contribute to HIV prevention. and the treatment of displaced persons. He said Catholics in Poland often feel reluctant to discuss such topics.

Msgr. Robert J. Vitillo, a priest from New Jersey who visited Ukraine and Poland earlier in July as an organizer for a task force of Catholic humanitarian agencies working in the crisis there, said that the response from faith groups should not be surprising.

“We accomplish our mission by walking with people living with and affected by HIV not because they belong to any particular category, but because we teach them and firmly believe that they share our very identity. let us be one with them, women and men, girls and boys, with whom we share the gift of being created in the very image of God. Everyone is our neighbour, not just certain people whom we love”, said Bishop Vitillo, who is secretary general of the International Catholic Migration Commission and health attaché at the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations.

Msgr. Vitillo told Catholic News Service that he has had extensive training with Ukrainian faith groups fighting HIV. “They have tried to continue this ministry, but they are really overwhelmed by the wide variety of basic human needs created by the invasion,” he said.

Tremendous challenges continue, he added.

“The traffickers arrived in the border areas before the religious communities could react,” he said. “But Catholic human trafficking workers have stepped up. We are also running psychological first aid workshops for those hosting refugees, many of whom are seeking refuge in monasteries, seminaries and faith-based schools. feel protected there even if many are not Catholic.

Not all participants in the interfaith gathering felt that international organizations took the input of the faith community seriously.

Maryknoll’s father, Rick Bauer, who after 25 years of HIV-related work in Africa recently joined the George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health in Washington, DC, as a certified chaplain, complained at the meeting of the latest UNAIDS report on the pandemic.

“This report is 376 pages. The word faith is mentioned once. We were in this mission before UNAIDS, and I promise we will be here after. If you want us to work with you, you have to mention us,” said he declared. said.

Msgr. Vitillo said it’s important for faith leaders responding to HIV not to keep their lights under a bushel.

“Many people in faith communities have been so busy providing services that we still don’t understand that we need to do more to talk about those services and present the data that demonstrates what we are doing. We focus on the person, and that’s really important, but we also have to look at and report the numbers,” Bishop dit Vitillo said.

“You really bring change at the community level, and that’s where faith groups serve and enjoy the respect of the people. If international organizations want to bring about real change, they have to do it with faith groups at the community level. .”

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