33.2 million people live with HIV, with 5,000 in Ireland, according to the World Health Organisation. A recent ecumenical pre-conference to a major conference on AIDS in Mexico brought together 500 mainly church-based organizations from 77 countries.
"People of faith are usually there with the survivors. They were there at the dawn of AIDS and remain today …” said UNAIDS Senior Partnerships Advisor Dr Pauline Muchina.
She said faith based groups must also take a bow for promoting what is becoming more and more widely held to be a main factor in preventing the spread of Aids, namely fidelity.
However, there is no room for complacency in the churches. Many people have suffered within the Church because of discrimination and non-acceptance.
In a moving session, Bishop Mark Hanson, President of the Lutheran World Federation, a well known AIDS activist, left his prepared speech to kneel down before a young Namibian woman who had been raped, infected with Aids and abandoned, to wash her feet saying, "I do this as an act of repentance for a silent church and immobile leaders who have shunned people with HIV and AIDS. As leaders we must engage in public acts of repentance or our words can never be trusted."
The biennial International Aids Conference in Mexico brought together 24,000 participants representing all but 5 countries in the world.
The conference theme, Universal Action Now, emphasized the need for continued urgency in the worldwide response to HIV/AIDS.
This was the first International Aids Conference to be held in Latin America (the previous one took place in Canada and the next will take place in Austria.
Dr Luis Soto Ramirez (AIDS 2008 local co-chair) judged the Conference as successful for many reasons including a government commitment to disseminate information on sex education, stigma and discrimination, and homophobia.
He also said, “Looking more globally, HIV prevention has enjoyed a lot of focus of this conference. I think this conference will become known as the conference of ‘Combination Prevention’”.
Commitments have also been obtained for greater availability of antiretrovirals which were shown to make a significant difference in for example Haiti where the price was reasonable whereas in Mexico the price is still too high for ordinary people to access the medicine.
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