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March 31, 2002
Dear Friends,
We have all heard the statistics about AIDS: 24.5 million HIV+
in Africa, 5.4 million new cases each year, 13.2 million AIDS
orphans. But what does that really mean? What does it mean to
a missionary working in health in Africa, to his friends and colleagues
he works with, and to the church he serves? And what, if anything,
can be done about it? First off, it means I cannot write
this letter without tears in my eyes. The pain is too real. I
have lost numerous friends and colleagues in the last ten years
and I have seen the impact it has on their families.
Recently a woman who has worked with us for the last four years
died of AIDS. She seemed perfectly healthy until she got pneumonia.
Her body could not fight it and within six weeks she was a shadow
of herself. Within twelve weeks she was dead. Her mother says
it was sorcery, and her unfaithful husband refuses to be tested.
Her five children just want her back. The
husband is unemployed and the oldest child is still in school,
so their future looks bleak. Fortunately, there is a Presbyterian
pastor here with a doctorate in family counseling who works with
families affected by AIDS. We put
the family in contact with him and he has worked with them extensively
to help them weather the crisis.
Another family situation that has touched me deeply is that
of the director of SANRU in Congo. He did his university studies
in the U.S. and became a doctor with a public health degree working
in Los Angeles. His siblings that stayed in Africa started dying
from AIDS, so he came back to Congo to take care of his mother
and the children of his siblings. His three brothers and his sister
all died, as did their spouses. When his mother died from old
age he was tempted to leave Congo, but he decided he would not
go back to the U.S. until he had made a difference in the country
of his birth. Now, with 19 children that he is responsible for
and a salary only a fraction of what he earned in the U.S., he
stays on to develop the largest church-run health program in Central
Africa.
I could go on about people I know affected by AIDS, but that
would not give you the magnitude of the problem. With 2.8 million
deaths per year, you would have to multiply these stories 2.8
million times to start to comprehend the impact of the disease.
And the figures keep getting worse each year. When I came to Cameroon
in 1997, we were seeing around a 4.3% HIV+ rate among blood donors
at Presbyterian hospitals. Last year it reached 20%. It is easy
to think that the problem is beyond our capacity to deal with
it, but there is actually much that can and is being done.
Studies have shown that the transmission of AIDS can be cut
in half with programs that emphasize counseling and treatment
of people with sexually transmitted diseases. Because of this,
church hospitals and health centers throughout Africa are getting
training and resources needed to run effective STD programs. The
SANRU project, with which I work in Congo, is training the staff
of 63 church hospitals and 1,200 health centers this year. With
that large of a program, it sets the standard by which other programs
in the country base their activities.
As regional health consultant, I help local Presbyterian church
institutions and programs link up with international research
groups working on AIDS. Both in Cameroon and Congo, we have an
ongoing program with the University of Missouri and Abbot laboratories
to track the mutation of the virus so that HIV tests can be more
effective. We have also done research on reducing the mother-to-child
transmission through the placenta. And we are starting a
three-year study of culturally appropriate, faith-based counseling
for families affected by AIDS.
For too long the church considered AIDS just a medical problem
that affected only a few. More and more, the churches in Africa
realize that they cannot be silent about AIDS as a social problem
that affects everyone. Education and counseling about AIDS with
and by women’s groups and youth groups, is becoming the rule.
Everyone has seen too many people die and too many children orphaned
to ignore the problem.
Last April I visited Malawi to study what can be done for AIDS
orphans. With the HIV+ rate approaching 30% in some areas, Malawi
is a view into the grim future of what much of Africa will look
like if nothing is done. It is estimated that 27% of the children
under 18 have lost one or both of their parents in Malawi. We
visited one hospital that had 6,000 orphaned children in its catchment
area. It is a problem that far outstrips the local culture’s
system for taking care of orphans. Many groups are trying to address
the problem with many different approaches. One of the best we
saw was the community-based orphan care program of the Presbyterian
hospital of Ekwendeni. They had helped the community develop a
comprehensive program involving micro-enterprise activities, more
than 270 day care centers and low-cost health care services. More
than 4,000 orphans were being cared for predominately by community
resources.
One of the major emphases of PC(USA)’s international health
work is addressing AIDS. It takes a global effort to help those
most affected to know that someone cares and to make those least
affected realize they must care.
Sincerely,
Larry Sthreshley
B.P. 7828
Yaounde, Cameroon
The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
31
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