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Group strives to get ignorance out of Africa
New York Daily News
www
04.14.03
By CLEM RICHARDSON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
There is a war ravaging the African continent.
On one side is HIV/AIDS, the deadliest plague of modern times, which has claimed
more than 29 million lives there over the last two decades.
Its opponents are nations fighting both the virus and a number of handicaps: little
money for drugs and treatment, dense urban centers where patients easily pass
the ailment on, poor communications networks and large, uneducated populations
ripe for exploitation and superstition.
President Bush has pledged billions of dollars to fight the spread of HIV in the
worst-hit nations of Africa.
But the war against AIDS will be fought by people like the 35 Christian and  Muslim
leaders from five African countries who gathered at the Balm in Gilead offices
over the past six weeks to discuss strategy.
It was Balm in Gilead's first Africa HIV/AIDS Faith Initiative training program.
Pernessa Seele, founder and CEO of Gilead, a faith-based AIDS group on W. 42nd
St. in Manhattan, said the gathering represented her organization's pledge "to
build relationships to lead the fight against AIDS in Africa."
Gilead, which takes its name from a biblical place of healing, has established
nine regional offices in the five countries: Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe,
Nigeria and Kenya.
The Rev. Evatt Mugarura of Uganda, a project organizer, said the group plans to
use an existing structure of churches and mosques to get its message of HIV prevention
to the people.
Given the group's religious background, it should come as no surprise that a primary
part of that message will be sexual abstinence.
But Seele and Mugarura said education about the disease, from how it is transmitted
to available - though for poor countries mostly unaffordable - treatments, is
what is most sorely needed.
"These are countries that can afford very little in the way of services"
to HIV/AIDS patients, Seele said. "What they must have is a look at the whole
epidemic, how it affects the countries' blood supply, what it means to use syringes
over and over. This is information they need."
"For many of our people, this is a new disease, with medicines we can't afford,"
said the Rev. Jacob Kahemele, national director of HIV/AIDS programs for the Christian
Council of Tanzania. "The enemy is ignorance. People look for a reason why
this is happening, and they can't find one."
"Knowledge influences attitude and behavior," said the Rev. Helen Ongondo,
a minister in Kenya and a health care worker. "If a person has the correct
information, they can protect themselves."
Five members of the group - Mugarura; Kahemele; Ongondo; the Rev. Kaine Nwashili,
national director of the Inter-Faith HIV/AIDS Council of Nigeria, and Lattif Shaban,
program manager of HIV and AIDS for the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims, noted
that each of their countries has the same problems associated with the disease
- and some unique ones as well.
Shaban noted that in Kenya, for instance, long-distance truckers who work in the
city during the week and return to their rural villages on the weekend have been
identified as a main route of transmission from urban to rural communities.
All five spoke of the myths and superstitions that run wild among people with
nothing else to go on. People are drinking their own urine as a possible cure,
one said. Others believe witches are responsible, or that they can cure themselves
by having sex with a virgin.
Mugarura noted that Uganda started a public education program about HIV transmission
in the mid-1980s, targeting children as young as 8. Uganda now has one of the
lowest HIV infection rates on the continent.
Ongondo was astonished to meet an American who has lived with the disease for
21 years.
"In my country, that would be considered a miracle," she said. "For
us, AIDS means death."
Even without medicines to distribute, Seele said, the initiative is already a
success.
"Africa is 20 years behind the rest of the world in education about HIV,"
she said. "We want to give people information so they know what to do to
protect themselves from infection."
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