Africa – World Aids Day 2023 Statement of JCAM: We are not the ‘son of the owner’; the Community is!
Nairobi, 01 December 2023.
In July 2000, I was sent for pastoral fieldwork to Kasisi-Zambia, a few kilometers outside Lusaka. My task was to support the community-based care program, which was being launched as a local and communitarian response to HIV and AIDS. It was at the height of the pandemic, and Africa's 37% prevalence rate seemed to underrepresent the reality.
One grim morning, a blaring motorcycle drove me and a guide through a small sandy path to a village where a series of HIV and AIDS-related deaths had hit. As we reached the homestead of the deceased, we could still perceive the dying embers of the previous night’s wake keeping fire. A woman of a certain age was still basking in its heat, but that did little to hide her pain and enormous anguish. My gaze, however, quickly settled on a child who must have been four or five years old. This death had orphaned him for a second time because he had just lost his second parent and was now forced to live with his ageing grandmother. His stare was glassy and bare, and it was all too visible that he had been crying for a long time. There is nothing more devastating than a child's cry, whatever the cause. After asking his name, I gave him a packet of biscuits I had in my pocket. A desperate gesture that expressed all my distress: a small packet of biscuits! And then what? This was the manifestation of my profound helplessness. What chance did he have of surviving?.
I don’t know what he has become today, but that memory does not leave me. It reminds me, on one hand, of the urgency to respond to the still-raging HIV and AIDS pandemic in this part of the world. On the other hand, we must know that if the boy survived, the community must have played a crucial role. The memory of this child allows me to make this statement on World AIDS Day 2023: the emergency is still unmitigated, and the community should be given more responsibility.
The urgency has not diminished!
It is true that over the past 21 years, the world has witnessed significant progress in the fight against HIV and AIDS, thanks to advancements in medical research, increased access to testing, treatment, awareness programs, prevention interventions and scale-up of stigma reduction strategies. But, as ICASA's (International Conference of AIDS and STIs in Africa) alarming theme underscores, AIDS is not over! Indeed, more than 40 years down the line, HIV and AIDS are still causing immeasurable turmoil to over 39 million people. They face health, social, psychosocial, economic, and spiritual challenges. More alarming is that there are new infections, despite these enormous efforts, with 1.3 million newly infected with HIV globally in 2022. The UNAIDS report 2023 shows that 4,000 teenagers between the ages of 14 and 24 are infected each week, with 3,100 of those cases occurring in sub-Saharan Africa The urgency is exacerbated by challenges linked to inequalities, stigma, increased poverty, apathy, poor governance, and lack of attention by the larger public. These hassles are not an abstraction for the communities but rather part of their daily vicissitudes. What, then, should the present-day appropriate response be?.
“Let the communities lead!”
The theme of this year’s World AIDS Day is “Let the communities lead!” This assertion rightly recognises the agency of the affected people and their communities while admitting the futility of action that excludes the active participation of every member of society. Along with the message of ICASA, it emphasises the importance of thinking and acting together. It is a pronouncement that no such problem belongs to one person.
Rev. Fr. Minaku L. José, SJ.
President of the Jesuit Conference of Africa and
Madagascar (JCAM).
Source: jesuits.africa
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