COVID complicated the HIV pandemic, but faith groups have been lauded for responding

Leaders in the global response to HIV and AIDS, gathered in Montreal for the International AIDS Conference, commended faith leaders for their contribution to combating the four-decade-old pandemic.

“Faith leaders have helped us stay the course. You have given hope to millions of people living with HIV and HIV activists with the power of prayer and faith when we needed it most,” said Vinay Saldanha, director of the US Liaison Office for the United Nations Joint Program on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS ), said July 27 at a pre-conference meeting of interfaith religious leaders.

UNAIDS’ report to the biennial international conference underscored how many years of steady progress in the fight against the disease had been fought during the crisis triggered by COVID-19, mass displacement and multiple international conflicts.

“There is some really bad news in the report,” said Matthew Kavanagh, special adviser to the Executive Director for Policy, Advocacy and Knowledge at UNAIDS, in a speech to the interfaith gathering. “But there is also some very good news because we’ve built community, because we’ve built resilience, because faith leaders have come together with community leaders and people living with HIV and built a response that can respond in times of crisis . ”

Attendees at the interfaith conference heard accounts of how faith-based HIV projects had quickly adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Eswatini’s church-sponsored Luke Commission health system, established in response to the AIDS crisis in what was then Swaziland, has treated 90% of the tiny African kingdom’s critically ill COVID-19 patients.

The pandemic has exacerbated the challenges of HIV in many areas.

“After just two years of COVID, more than 10 million children around the world have been orphaned by COVID. Two in three of these are adolescents, and they are at increased risk of sexual violence, HIV incidence, mental health problems and teenage pregnancy,” said Dr. Susan Hillis, senior technical adviser, Faith and Community Initiative USA The President’s Contingency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, in a presentation before the interfaith meeting.

For several years, the Vatican has sponsored an initiative to improve children’s access to HIV tests, diagnostics and medication. By bringing together leaders from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries with researchers and church activists, the effort has yielded good results. COVID-19 has set back those efforts, but a key participant in the effort told the interfaith gathering that the pandemic cannot be blamed for every failure.

“Our progress was stalled even before COVID. Children had 25% less access to care than adults. This shows a lack of political power. Children don’t protest, children don’t sit at the table, they don’t raise their hands when the Global Fund (to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria) decides on program priorities. There is no chair for children, so they often stay behind. No one is against children, but it’s shocking how quickly people forget to include children,” said Chip Lyons, President and CEO of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

Some new models of the service work well. Hillis gave the interfaith gathering an encouraging account of a program in Benue state, Nigeria, in which churches sponsor baby showers for pregnant women and their partners. It extends an existing tradition of denominations celebrating pregnancy by blessing expectant mothers during services. The new practice also includes male partners and offers on-site testing for a variety of health issues, including HIV status. Those who test positive are referred for antiretroviral treatment, which usually prevents transmission of HIV to the newborn.

Hillis said the program will next be extended to mosques.

Those attending the interfaith gathering learned how the churches have maintained vital HIV prevention, testing and treatment programs even in the midst of war in Ukraine.

“When Russia invaded Ukraine this year, the first people seeking help came from churches. They’ve given us medicine, they’ve given us psychological support, and they’ve educated soldiers on the importance of HIV testing. The churches organized shelters specifically for people living with HIV and members of the gay community because they were not accepted in the general population’s shelters,” said Valeriia Racynska, a leader of 100% Life, a Ukrainian group, which is the largest organization for people with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Jacek Tyszko, senior advisor on faith engagement at the UNAIDS Geneva office, recounted how the Catholic Church in Poland, which has taken in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, invited Ukrainian Catholic Church workers to come to Poland to help with HIV prevention and treatment among the displaced. He said Catholics in Poland are often reluctant to raise such issues.

Monsignor Robert J. Vitillo, a New Jersey priest who visited Ukraine and Poland in early July to convene a working group of Catholic humanitarian organizations working there during the crisis, said the reaction from religious groups should come as no surprise.

“We fulfill our mission by accompanying people living with and affected by HIV, not because they belong to a special category, but because we teach and we firmly believe that they share our identity. We are one with them, women and men, girls and boys, with whom we share the gift of being created in God’s image. Everyone is our neighbor, not just certain people we like,” said Monsignor Vitillo, secretary-general of the International Catholic Migration Commission and health attaché to the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations.

Monsignor Vitillo told the Catholic News Service that he has done a lot of training with Ukrainian faith groups responding to HIV. “They have tried to continue this ministry, but they are really overwhelmed by the diversity of basic human needs created by the invasion,” he said.

There remain enormous challenges, he added.

“The traffickers got to the border areas before the faith communities could respond,” he said. “But Catholic human trafficking workers have responded. We also conduct workshops in psychological first aid for the reception of refugees, many of whom seek refuge in monasteries, seminaries and church schools. They feel protected there, although many are not Catholic.”

Not all participants in the interfaith gathering felt that international organizations took the contribution of the faith community seriously.

Maryknoll Father Rick Bauer, who recently joined the George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health in Washington, DC as a board-certified minister after 25 years of HIV-related work in Africa, complained during the interfaith meeting about UNAIDS’ recent report on the Pandemic.

“This report is 376 pages long. The word faith is mentioned once. We were on this mission before UNAIDS and I promise we will be here after it. If you want us to work with you, you have to mention us,” he said.

Monsignor Vitillo said it is important for faith leaders responding to HIV not to keep their lights under the bushel basket.

“Many people in faith communities have been so busy providing services that we still don’t understand that we need to do more to report on these services and present the data that shows what we are doing. We focus on the person and that’s really important, but we also have to look at the numbers and report,” Msgr. Vitillo said.

“They’re really making a difference at the community level, and that’s where religious groups serve and have the respect of the people. If international organizations want to bring about real change, they must do so with religious groups at the community level.”