Since 1981, 25 million people worldwide have died from AIDS.

Forty million more are currently infected with the HIV virus. Half are women.

The same number of people who died in the 2005 tsunami die from AIDS every three months in sub-Saharan Africa.

1.3 million Kenyans are infected with HIV or AIDS.


So what is CMF doing about AIDS?

Education at the community level

Prevention of HIV transmission based on biblical models of sexual purity

Training the church to accept and care for those infected and affected by AIDS

Home-based care for AIDS patients and orphans

Testing and counseling services

Medicines for opportunistic infections

Treatments with ARVs, food, and supplements

Mobilization of and partnership with the Church

 
 


HIV/AIDS
The largest humanitarian crisis in global history
While the world has known of the HIV/AIDS pandemic for more than 25 years, the statistics are still staggering. In some African countries, the infection rate approaches 40% of the population. In sub-Saharan Africa, the area where Hope Partnership is based, 28 million people live with HIV. Eighty percent of the 15 million children under 18 who have been orphaned by this disease are in sub-Saharan Africa. By 2015, another 14 million will join them.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a conference of the world’s leading HIV/AIDS experts in July 2007 that the “world is losing the fight against AIDS. For every one person that you put in therapy, six new people get infected.”

Despite the fact that more and more people have access to the anti-retroviral drugs that help treat the virus, new infections are continuing to outpace the global effort to treat and educate patients.
“The HIV epidemic is essentially uncontrolled, uncontrolled in Africa, uncontrolled completely in Asia right now,” said Dr. Brian Gazzard of the British HIV Association.

Can the Church make a difference in this dire situation?
Hope Partnership uses the strategy of Community Health Evangelism (CHE) to address the AIDS crisis in these five areas:

• Prevention education: Engaging training based on biblical principles to motivate young people and communities to make the changes necessary to stop the spread of the virus.

• Home-based care: Community health evangelists (CHEs), visit AIDS patients in their homes. They prepare food, teach hygiene, administer medical, counsel, pray, and share Christ, integrating the spiritual and physical sides of life.

• Child-to-child HIV/AIDS education: This is done through the various Hope Centers and schools and is very effective.

• Micro-enterprise: Quick and easy money can be made in prostitution and making and selling illegal brews and drugs. Livelihood opportunities must be provided through microcredit grants and loans with business training.

• Antiretroviral treatment: CHEs help distribute ARVs to patients in their homes and provide education about their use.

To date, there are about 30 Community Health Evangelists providing HIV/AIDS home-based care in the Mathare Valley. They are assigned 3-5 patients each. Home visits include medical care (dressing wounds, pain relievers, ARV’s), psychological support, and spiritual support through prayer, Bible reading, and sharing the gospel. Specific medical questions are also addressed, such as nutrition, breast feeding, mother-to-child transmission, and so on.

At the next level, the CHEs train a family member in the same topics and lessons so that they can have the knowledge to take responsibility for their own family member’s care, and care for others in the community. As always with CHE, the emphasis is on community-based action as a way of restoring the people’s dignity and self-esteem.