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The Indian chapter of the Caritas HAART for Children Campaign was launched with much fanfare on the 20th of November 2009 in New Delhi. The event was all the more since it coincided with the 20th Anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
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Bishop Dr. Elmar Fischer from the Diocese of Feldkirch signs the HAART for Children campaign
From a news website of Vorarlberg
Bregenz: Today, on World AIDS Day, Caritas international calls for an improvement of the situation of children Living or affected by HIV/AIDS with the launch of the “HAART for children” campaign.
Michael Zündel from the department for International cooperation in Caritas of the Diocese of Feldkirch, and a group of students from Feldkirch explained the facts and figures of the campaign to the governor of Vorarlberg, Herbert Sausgruber. It is hoped that 20.000 signatures will be collected in Vorarlberg, leading up to the International Aids Conference, that will take place in Vienna in July 2010. (more…)
US ambassador to the Vatican, Miguel Diaz, and Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's observer to the UN in Geneva, were just two of the speakers on the first day of the Caritas/US Embassy to the Holy See AIDS conference. Credit: Caritas/Michelle Hough
By Michelle Hough, communications officer for Caritas Internationalis
If you think you’re too small to be effective, you’ve never been in bed with a mosquito, goes the saying.
Representatives from UN agencies, drug companies and NGOs and faith-based organisations large and small (but very effective) came to Rome mid-October to make headway on the desperate problem of children living with HIV and TB in poor countries.
The occasion was a paediatrics AIDS conference organised by Caritas Internationalis and the US Embassy to the Holy See. There were few mosquitoes around thankfully, but lots of ideas and discussion on the issues surrounding children with AIDS and TB.
One of the main messages to emerge from the conference on improving testing and treatment for these children was that while all the organisations worked well in their fields, their impact would be much greater if they joined their forces together. (more…)
By Rev. Msgr. Robert J. Vitillo, Caritas Internationalis Head of Delegation at the UN in Geneva
The most recent “Substantive Session” of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), held in Geneva, on 06 – 31 July 2009, had what might seem to be an abstract theme –“ focus on current global and national trends and their impact on social development, including health” – but, in fact, it was one of the more practical meetings I ever attended in the august halls of the United Nations Centre here.
The pragmatic directions came right from the “top” – when United Nations Secretary-General opened the meeting by stating that “he crises of the past 12 months – the energy crisis, the food crisis and the current economic crisis – has caused widespread hardship and grief.” Mr. Ban said that health is the foundation for peace and prosperity. Investments in health are investments in society. They save lives and benefit economies through improved productivity. Prevention efforts could avoid huge future expense.
World Health Organization Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, was even more direct – she said quite bluntly that “the world is in a mess”. (more…)
Joyce, 11 months, is just starting on ARVs. Children are not only at risk of inheriting their mothers' HIV status, but also their hunger, poverty and lack of education. Credit: Caritas/Michelle Hough
By Michelle Hough, communications officer
Thabang Society, Parys, South Africa
Watch a film on the effects of AIDS in Swaziland and South Africa.
Sarah* has the face of a young girl, but at the age of 29 she has already been raped, has lost her husband to suicide and has lived through the deaths of her three young children to AIDS-related diseases. She herself also has HIV.
None of her children survived beyond the age of five. One died at just three months old. Two of her children died on her back as she took them to hospital.
After her first child died, Sarah didn’t want any more children, but her husband was abusive and left her with no choice but to get pregnant again, even though there was a risk the children would have HIV.
“Sometimes I just sleep because I feel so hungry that I don’t know what else to do,” says Sarah when I meet her at the Thabang Society therapy and counselling centre, two hours away from Johannesburg.
Now, Khulelaphi is grinning broadly and looks the picture of health. But she tells me that not so long again, she could no longer cope with her illness. Credit: Caritas/Michelle Hough
“I know what I want, sex can wait.”
This was the message on posters at the National AIDS Council in Manzini, Swaziland. A mixture of awareness raising and empowerment. They even had children’s books with sound effects and pictures to teach younger generations about AIDS and TB.
“Faith-based initiatives also have an impact,”said Busi Dlamini, the centre’s coordinator. “People tend to believe priests more about the need for behaviour changes… although what they do with that information is another question.”
The messages of fidelity at the government-run AIDS Council coincided with the Catholic Church’s teachings on HIV. The Church receives criticism for its stance on HIV prevention, but what isn’t often mentioned, is the enormous amount of care the Church provides for people living with HIV and AIDS in developing countries.
Bishop Louis Ndlovu, president of Caritas Swaziland spreading the word about HIV treatment and prevention for children. Credit: Caritas/Michelle Hough
By Michelle Hough, communications officer
Watch a film on the effects of AIDS in Swaziland and South Africa.
“AIDS: Don’t die of ignorance” was just one of the public service announcements that the British Government used in the mid-1980s to shock people into behaving responsibly.
The people I visited in rural Swaziland yesterday, who had HIV and who had lost children to AIDS-related illnesses, lived in mud huts and didn’t have televisions or newspapers. Were they dying of ignorance?
“I’d say over 90 percent of people in Swaziland have knowledge about HIV,” said Dr Dube, director of the LaMvelase AIDS help centre in Manzini.
“However, most of the children who need to be tested are in rural areas, where they may live with their grandparents, and for these people there’s a lack of outreach,” he said.
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Thabisile has to walk 3 miles along a rough track just to get to the bus stop to go to hospital for her AIDS treatment. Then, it costs 30 rand (around 2.60 euro) for a return trip, and she didn’t always have that money. Credit: Caritas/Michelle Hough
By Michelle Hough, Communications Officer
Watch a film on the effects of AIDS in Swaziland and South Africa.
A group of 40 women and children are waiting for us as we arrive in the rural area of Velebantfu. They all have HIV, and so do many of the children.
I ask where all the men are. I’m told they are dead. Musa had told said that life expectancy in Swaziland was 37 years old. Many of the husbands and boyfriends who have died were in their 30s and 40s – an age when they could have actively contributed to the country’s workforce.
The women are now sick and frightened. They have little money and very little food or water. The local hospital provides antiretrovirals, but some women tell me they sometimes skip their monthly trip to the hospital because it is 45km away and they can’t always afford the bus fare. Some of the women I spoke to also have TB.
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Swaziland: Around 140,000 children out of a total population of 1.1 million are either infected with or affected by HIV. Credit: Caritas/Michelle Hough
By Michelle Hough, communications officer
Watch a film on the effects of AIDS in Swaziland and South Africa.
Abba was on the CD player, pizza was on the menu and there was a car park full of 4×4s outside. It could have been any American town on a quiet Sunday night. But it wasn’t, it was Manzini in Swaziland.
I’d known Swaziland wasn’t going to be quite what I’d expected after I’d seen billboards advertising Kentucky Fried Chicken along the motorway as Sr Aine Hughes, emergency officer from Caritas South Africa, drove me from Pretoria. The American dream was alive and well in a mountain kingdom in southern Africa.
“Our HIV infection rate currently stands at 42 percent,” said Musa Dlamini, Caritas Swaziland’s AIDS programme officer over dinner. “That’s the highest rate in the world.”
That was one reason why I’d come here – to gather communications materials for HAART for Children – Caritas Internationalis’ paediatric AIDS campaign. We wanted to show what happened to children in poor countries when they didn’t have access to timely HIV/TB diagnosis and to adequate treatment.
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3rd World Stop TB Partnership Forum 24th March – World TB Day By Rev. Msgr. Robert J. Vitillo Head of the Caritas Internationalis Delegation in Geneva and Chairperson, Catholic HIV and AIDS Network (CHAN) 
When compared to the biennial International AIDS Conferences, the environment of this Forum lacked the “glitz”. The crowds were smaller, and the activists were less assertive. But the sense of urgency was just as immediate and the passion was just as evident among the 1,500 participants from more than 100 countries who assembled on 23 March for the opening of the Third Stop TB Partners Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The theme of the Forum is both straightforward and compelling: “Simply, Stopping Tuberculosis (TB)”. Not many years ago, the global human family seemed to be well on its way to accomplishing that goal by the year 2050 – as had been promised by the public health, clinical, and scientific experts.
In the opening ceremony of the Forum, we learned that the dream may not be realized – due to a number of developments, including the large number of HIV/TB co-infections as well as the development of new and much harder-to-treat “multidrug-resistant (MDR)” and “extensively drug resistant (XDR)” strains of the bacillus that causes TB. It was reported that some 9.7 million people were diagnosed with TB during 2007 and 1.77 million people died of the disease.
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