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Papal fallibility risks thousands of African lives

By Janet Bagnall, Canwest News Service
March 27, 2009

In parts of Africa, AIDS patients are brought to medical clinics in wheelbarrows.

South Africa, one of the continent's wealthiest nations, is a country ravaged by denial. AIDS is not acknowledged, even though the death toll from the disease in South Africa is estimated to be 900 a day. The bodies of those who die of AIDS are buried by grieving relatives who jostle for space to carry out the interment.

When questioned, they talk vaguely, local media report, of losing a loved one to pneumonia or cancer, anything but AIDS.

Africa is where two-thirds of the world's AIDS patients live. In 2007, 1.7 million people in the sub-Saharan part of the continent became infected with the virus that causes AIDS, bringing the continent's total number of infections to 22.5 million. The majority of those infected are women.

If, as Pope Benedict said this month, it is possible to halt the deadly AIDS scourge by remaining chaste outside marriage and faithful within it, there should be many fewer women who are infected with the AIDS virus.

Because despite the fact they form the majority of those who are HIV-infected, the majority of African women are faithful to a single partner and 80 per cent did not have sex until they were at least 17.

These figures are from the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS, part of UNAIDS, which reports that an alarming 40 per cent of the young women surveyed in Zimbabwe and South Africa were HIV-positive.

They were infected despite having remained faithful to one partner.

What has the Pope to say to them? Too bad?

The coalition points out the obvious: Women's vulnerability to sexual violence and coercion means they are more vulnerable to HIV infection. Women do not have equal access to education, money and the protection of the law.

Africa's current "ABC" approach -- Abstain, Be mutually faithful and use Condoms -- is helping slow the rate of infection. For the Pope to command in the name of God that people stick to A and B but skip C means a proven weapon in the struggle to contain the epidemic might be set aside by thousands of people.

"Condoms are one of the most effective, available and realistic tools we have in preventing the spread of this disease," said Darryl Perry, chief executive officer of OHAfrica, a five-year-old organization founded by the Ontario Hospital Association and the Change Foundation to help in the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Speaking from the African kingdom of Lesotho, where nearly one in four adults is HIV-infected, 60 per cent of them women, Perry said the Pope's comments "can only be interpreted to signal that the religious belief of one faith community is more important than saving lives."

Perry described the Pope's statement that condoms might actually worsen the epidemic as "appalling and irresponsible." An effective response to the epidemic must be built on "evidence, not ignorance," Perry said.

While the Pope might believe that condoms lead to sexual licence, there is no factual basis for this assumption. The facts show, according to the World Health Organization, that "consistent and correct" condom use reduces the risk of HIV infection by 90 per cent.

Pope Benedict leads a church with a growth rate in Africa of more than 40 per cent in the past 20 years. Thousands of Africans look to the Pope for guidance. Priests and nuns and lay Catholics work with African AIDS patients, caring for them in often nearly impossible situations and looking after the thousands of children they leave behind. What a crisis of conscience Pope Benedict's words have created. Why would helping the faithful in Africa not mean helping them avoid HIV infection?

Worldwide, there are 7,400 new HIV infections every day, according to UNAIDS, and condoms are an "essential component" of prevention.

Other world leaders recognized, in signing the UN Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, that reducing HIV infections among girls and women is an essential step. They have moved beyond the point where condoms are even open to debate, to support additionally the development of prevention tools such as microbicide that girls and women can control.

"Here on the front lines in Africa," Perry said, "the Pope's comments are unhelpful and irresponsible ... many more people will die because of the increased HIV infection if condoms are not used."

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