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USA
The HIV/AIDS epidemic is far from over HIV/AIDS is more than a public health issue. It is also a social justice issue… an economic issue… a human rights issue.
The National Episcopal AIDS Coalition (NEAC) was founded in the US in 1988 as a community of faith, hope and action, offering understanding and spiritual comfort not only to those infected but to their families and to those who minister to them. Today, as HIV continues to spread in spite of treatment breakthroughs, NEAC must battle complacency as well as prejudice. It is fighting to reduce the stigma of HIV/AIDS that affects not only those infected but everyone who associates with and ministers to them. The epidemic is far from over in the U.S. and other developed countries. In the U.S. death rates are going up among vulnerable and forgotten populations. Rates of infection among African-American men in places like Newark and Chicago are as high as in some of the hardest-hit areas of sub- Saharan Africa. At the same time, infection rates are going up among affluent older people as well, though poor, rural, and minority communities continue to be hit hardest.
As one commentator noted, “When someone finds out you’re HIV positive or have AIDS… you can lose your wife, your kids, your job, your business partners, and the support of your church.” It is not unheard of for a pastor to refuse to officiate at the funeral of a person who has died of AIDS-related problems. Nor is it unheard of for families, and communities, to ostracise those infected.
Fortunately, it is also not unheard of for people like the individuals and organisations that are members of NEAC to offer support and information. In addition to advocating for a compassionate and ethical ministry, a major NEAC concern is to educate the public, especially Episcopalians, about the disease. To that end, NEAC is revising its popular Teen AIDS Prevention curricular, which is designed to teach teens to be peer educators and provides scriptural resources to support the public health information it offers. Last year NEAC issued the second edition of Youth Ministry in an Age of AIDS, which provides information for adults about the risks that adolescents face and offers easy-to-use lessons for opening a dialogue with young people about HIV. This free resource is guided by General Convention resolutions to promote abstinence and monogamy as well as offer instruction on disease prevention. The NEAC AGAPE (All Generations AIDS Prevention Education) project is working to create similar resources for people over 50.
A recent study found that the proportion of adults who believed that a person infected with HIV through sex or drug use deserves to have AIDS has increased in the 1990s. NEAC is working to reduce that kind of ignorance and to recommit the church in the US to the mandate in the Episcopal Church’s baptismal covenant to “seek and serve Christ in all persons” and to “respect the dignity of every human being.”
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