The Vatican’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva says
that 30 years after the discovery of AIDS, international relief agencies
and faith-based groups are beginning to show an openness to the
Catholic solution for the illness.
“We are at the beginning of a
convergence in the sense that functionaries of international
institutions and organizations and people from faith-based groups are
talking across the lines and coming to respect each other a bit more,”
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told CNA.
Archbishop Tomasi’s comments come three decades after the first medical paper recognizing the illness was published in the U.S.
Archbishop Tomasi’s comments come three decades after the first medical paper recognizing the illness was published in the U.S.
Based
on a study of homosexual men in California and New York, the new
ailment was initially labelled GRID, or Gay-related Immune Deficiency.
Since then, the U.N. estimates that 65 million people worldwide have
been infected by HIV/AIDS, with over 25 million killed.
The most
significant point of departure between the Catholic Church and many
other bodies involved in the fight against AIDS is over the use of
condoms as a preventative measure.
“It has been proven and even
documented now that the really effective way is to change your
behaviour. And so, this has been our insistence,” Archbishop Tomasi
said, stressing the Catholic Church’s emphasis on behavioral change over
condom-distribution.
His comments also come in the week that a
new report suggests millions of people are dying from AIDS because
Western governments are refusing to accept that condoms are ineffective
in curbing the spread of the disease.
The report, entitled “The
Catholic Church and the Global AIDS Crisis,” is the work of the American
public health expert Matthew Hanley.
“We are always told that
condoms are the best known ‘technical’ means for preventing HIV
transmission, but we are never told that condom promotion has failed to
reverse those most severe African epidemics; behavioral modification, on
the other hand, has brought them down,” says Hanley.
Hanley
estimates that six million infections would have been averted in
sub-Saharan Africa over the past decade if the Catholic approach of
fidelity and abstinence had been promoted instead of widespread condom
use.
“That this is not common knowledge should give us pause.
Public health leaders may increasingly recognize this reality – but
remain, by and large, reluctant to emphasize behavioral approaches to
AIDS control over technical solutions.”
Hanley’s report also
claims that in east Africa, Uganda saw a 10 percent drop in the number
of people with AIDS between 1991 and 2001 after investing in abstinence
programs. The rates of infection only began to climb again when foreign
donor agencies insisted on the increased use of condoms in the fight
against AIDS.
Last month the Vatican held a two-day conference
on how best to tackle the AIDS epidemic. It was aimed at finding common
ground on the issue and included contributions from those who disagree
with the Catholic Church.