| Africas war is now HIV/AIDS, Methodist bishop says by Linda BloomUnited Methodist News Service  Bishop Mvume Dandala once visited a small village in Mozambique populated only by elderly women.
Their husbands had been killed during the countrys long civil war, and their children had fled, also because of the war. The village had no future. In the same way, the HIV/AIDS pandemic is 'killing the tomorrows' of people across the entire African continent, the former presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa said Oct. 5, at a breakfast at Riverside Church in New York. Each day, 7,000 Africans die from HIV/AIDS. Dandala, who recently became general secretary of the All-Africa Conference of Churches, came to the United States under the sponsorship of Africa Action, a Washington-based Africa advocacy organization. He was among the participants in a series of public teach-ins in six U.S. cities in connection with the organizations Africas Right to Health Campaign, which focuses on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. He also co-officiated the World Communion Sunday service at Riverside Church with its senior minister, the Rev. James Forbes Jr., and former pastor William Sloane Coffin. Because of continuing conflicts on the continent, the bishop noted that it is hard for Westerners to see 'the powerful things that are happening in Africa.' But in this post-apartheid era, 'it is exciting to see more and more African leaders committing themselves to the paths of democracy,' Dandala said. To hear those leaders talk about working toward good governments, political accountability and social systems that will put food on everyones table is a major advancement for the continent, he added. The way nearby heads of state negotiated the peaceful departure of former president Charles Taylor from Liberia this summer is an example of how this newfound cooperation can work, according to Dandala. When South Africans finally were freed of the apartheid system, they knew they had to set up an effective government and deal with substantial issues such as poverty. 'But none of us expected the tragedy of HIV/AIDS, which decimated the continent,' he said. Addressing the tragedy requires practical assistance, not condemnation, from the churches. 'All we ask is that our friends with the church should walk with us in this great battle,' Dandala said. In Africa, however, the battle involves more than access to medicine or treatment. 'We cannot fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic without giving equal attention to the issue of poverty,' the bishop explained. 'Until and unless we face up to the poverty issue all our strategies will fall short.' When some one suffers from poor nutrition, for example, the toxic effects from drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS are heightened, he pointed out. In many parts of Africa, the health care system is so poor that instead of being a tool for treatment it actually becomes a transmission agent through the re-use of needles, for example to help spread the virus, Dandala declared. The All-Africa Conference of Churches, based in Nairobi, Kenya, has taken several steps to deal with the HIV/AIDS pandemic. During the past two years, it has sponsored three well-attended conferences that produced materials regarding the crisis for member churches to use. Currently, the organization is in the process of identifying which of its 169 national denominational members needs additional help to do 'cutting-edge work' on HIV/AIDS, the bishop said. Another of the organizations concerns is that only about 20 percent of the money Africa receives to fight the disease goes toward research and that research not sponsored by major pharmaceutical companies often receives no funding at all. A goal of the conference is to equip the churches to address this and other 'powerful moral questions for this pandemic,' Dandala said. He believes the United States, as a nation, 'needs to take the global fight against HIV/AIDS a little more seriously,' he said. And if churches can interpret the pandemic as a moral issue, 'I think that would be a powerful thing.' Most Africans committed to battling the effects of HIV/AIDS 'are ordinary churchgoers who live with this pain every day,' he pointed out. He suggested that U.S. churches could form partnerships with African churches to join in the fight. Dandala said his organization could help forge the links for those partnerships. More information on the All-Africa Conference of Churches can be found at www.aacc-ceta.org, the organizations Web site. | 
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