HIV/AIDS: 'We’re at the beginning of a 100-year war'
SALUNGA, Pa. – Beth Good first began seeing HIV/AIDS patients when she ran a small clinic in Olepolos, Kenya, 1998-2001.
“I knew that’s what they had,” Good said. “But even though there was free testing, no one ever took the test except me after an accidental needle prick.”
Then last year on a trip to East Africa with her husband Clair, representative to Africa for Eastern Mennonite Missions, Good met with pastors and leaders who were all wrestling with the issue – and wanting to address it – but feeling overwhelmed. All of them were already caring for additional AIDS-related dependents and ministering to scores of AIDS sufferers and their families.
Good said, “I kept asking myself, ‘How can we be standing with our sister churches in the challenge of HIV/AIDS they are facing?’
That’s when she got the idea of writing a manual for African church leaders. The manual Good envisioned would to be simple and practical. It would explain in basic ways how the disease is transmitted and prevented. It would explore cultural and social issues that contribute to the problem and look at the silence and stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS. The manual would also look at the Bible and HIV/AIDS. It would teach churches how to minister to those affected by HIV/AIDS and suggest outreach possibilities and home-based care. There would be discussion questions and group exercises.
Good noted that beyond education, prevention, and compassionate care for AIDS sufferers, there are also the needs of more than 15 million AIDS orphans to consider. “The problem is so overwhelming that we’re tempted to look elsewhere for help – like to the UNAIDS program or President Bush,” she said. “But we can’t look primarily to the government. I believe God is calling the church to bring God’s love and compassion to those who are suffering from the effects of HIV/AIDS.”
And Good knows there’s a lot that needs to happen to equip the church. She noted, for example, a recent experience of Edith Shenk, an EMM worker in Bukiroba, Tanzania. Shenk walked into a Bible school classroom and saw the question a student had scrawled on the blackboard for discussion: “Can God forgive a person with HIV/AIDS?”
Since her vision last summer to do something more to equip the church for ministry to those affected by HIV/AIDS, Good has spent most of the past year researching and writing A Manual for Church Workers Ministering to Those Affected by HIV/AIDS, which will be released shortly.
With this tool now ready for release, Good said she’d like to provide a copy for all EMM-related church leaders and pastors in Africa and Asia. (The manual is also available to others upon request. E-mail BGood@AllVantage.com for information.) Although the manual is designed to stand on its own, Good is also planning a series of leaders’ workshops in East Africa to introduce the manual this year.
Two years ago when Good began her work as HIV/AIDS initiative coordinator for EMM, she began by facilitating EMM’s responses to strongly-felt and expressed needs coming from sister churches around the world.
In these efforts, Good has done things like helping to raise awareness and funding to assist Matharie Mennonite Church in Kenya build a classroom to educate AIDS orphans. She’s provided money for school uniforms for orphans in Western Kenya. Now she’s written the manual and is planning workshops to train church workers.
While these are all good and much-appreciated gestures, Good knows they’re only beginning to scratch the surface of what really needs to be done. Her biggest dream is to found a model community that would run a holistic HIV/AIDS program, including everything from education and prevention to the latest in anti-retroviral (ARV) drug treatments.
“There is so much that needs to be done foundationally in education and infrastructure development before the ARV treatments, which are becoming available in limited ways, can offer some hope,” Good said. “These are not a cure, but they can improve quality and extend the life of those infected.”
As she moves about in North American churches to raise awareness, Good said she is finding that people are very open and wanting to help. They’re not complacent. The problem is just so huge that no one knows what to do. The media also have not given it much publicity. HIV/AIDS is more subtle and slow moving than a tsunami, but even more deadly. Forty-six million are living with HIV/AIDS; there are more than 15 million AIDS orphans, and the rate of infection is growing by 15 percent annually. An estimated 20 million AIDS-related deaths have occurred since the first documented case in 1981.
Good, who had worked as a nurse at Hershey Medical Center, has just begun a new job as director of clinical services at Hope Within Community Health Center in Elizabethtown, Pa., along with her HIV/AIDS advocacy work with EMM.
Good noted that even in the U.S. where tremendous strides have been made in nearly eliminating the mother-to-child transmission rate and extending life through ARV drugs, she’d love to see churches be doing more with AIDS patients. This year at Hershey Medical Center, for example, she’s seen two AIDS patients suffer and die alone without any contact with family or friends. Stigmatization is not only an African problem.
“I know we can’t help everyone,” Good said, “But I believe we as a church are called of God to make a difference in the lives of people suffering from the effects of HIV/AIDS. In my new AIDS advocacy role at EMM, I want to challenge and equip as many as I can.”
While the HIV/AIDS problem is currently most severe in sub-Saharan Africa, where EMM relates to large national Mennonite churches in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia, Good said that HIV/AIDS infection is also growing rapidly in Asia.
“There is no quick fix,” Good said. “We must realize we’re at the beginning of a 100-year war.”
Beth Good, HIV/AIDS Initiative coordinator for EMM, has written a significant manual to assist in the fight against AIDS.
View PDF of HIV/AIDS Manual
Photo credit: Josiah Garber
Beth visits AIDS orphans at New Life Homes’ nursery school in Swaziland.
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