More recognition needed for faith-based agencies who do the bulk of work
By Anthony Barich
GOVERNMENTS are bypassing faith-based organisations that do the bulk of the work with AIDS victims while spending billions of dollars on AIDS relief, Caritas Internationalis’ (CI) Special Adviser to the United Nations on HIV and AIDS said.
Monsignor Robert Vitillo, in Sydney to address local Caritas and health care workers, told The Record on October 26 that governments need to recognise faith-based organisations who are not receiving the funding to carry out their essential work.
He said that while the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has committed US$10 billion to support programs for these diseases over the past two years, only five percent of this goes to faith-based organisations.
This is despite the fact that, in Africa, between 40 and 70 percent of health care is delivered by faith-based organisations, he said. “There’s a big difference between the burden of care and the funding for them to be able to give an effective response to HIV,” Mgr Vitillo said.
Mgr Vitillo, a Special Advisor for CI which has 165 member organisations working in 200 territories and countries, said that while sub-Saharan Africa is “still the epicentre of the AIDS pandemic,” CI is also heavily involved in Asia and some parts of Oceania, especially Papua New Guinea to Australia’s north.
Mgr Vitillo, a diocesan priest of New Jersey, said that when CI as a confederation made HIV/AIDS one of its top priorities of action in 1987, it was among the first agencies to do so.
He urged Church-based organisations to respond to HIV in collaboration with programs tackling tuberculosis, as half of AIDS victims die of the infectious bacterial disease that spreads through the air, as their immune systems are down.
It is important that Catholic agencies work in partnership with others, including government agencies with conflicting ideologies, he said, as “no one organisation can solve HIV/AIDS. There may be areas of disagreement, but we need to work on what we agree on, and we hope that funding groups like the Global Fund and governments will recognise better the strong role the Church plays in responding to HIV/AIDS, and will provide funding for an even more effective response”.
“Government agencies often bypass faith-based organisations even though they’re doing the bulk of the work,” he said.
Mgr Vitillo said that the response to HIV/AIDS should be within a wider response to ongoing development and health problems, as those who live in poverty have poor nutrition and compromised immune systems which may influence their vulnerability to HIV.
“We can’t do women’s empowerment programs, for example, without also including men in telling them how to prevent spreading HIV,” he said, adding that, as a Catholic organisation, Caritas promotes the Church’s teaching that, as sexual activity spreads HIV, it should be restricted to a permanent and mutually faithful relationship in marriage. If one partner within a marriage has HIV, he said it is a matter for private pastoral care between the couple and a priest, citing two Bishops from the continent who recently made statements to that effect.
Since its creation in 2002, the Global Fund has become the main source of finance for programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, with approved funding of US$15.6 billion for over 572 programs in 140 countries. Based in Geneva, Mgr Vitillo currently heads the Global Catholic HIV and AIDS Network and, while assisting governments and the UN in policy development, is also leading discussions with pharmaceutical companies to lobby for more child-friendly medication.