The Aids Challenge

The AIDS challenge is everybody’s issue, says Dr Williams

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken about the death of a friend from HIV/AIDS, and his encounters with the infection “in many forms”, in his message for World Aids Day.

Dr Williams called on Christian people to respond “clearly and bravely” to the challenge posed by the virus. His message appears on his website as a video, in which he speaks of how he has seen the illness over the past 20 years.

“I’ve encountered it in the death of a friend; I’ve encountered it sitting by a lonely bedside in South Wales, waiting for someone to die. I think also, though, of a day spent with carers and counsellors and people living with HIV in London, where the courage, and even the joy of the group was very much in evidence.”

The Church was engaged “bravely and imaginatively” in responding. He praised the work of the Mothers’ Union, Christian Aid, and Tearfund, particularly in Africa. The Church’s “universal reach in African society” gave it a capacity that few others could emulate. But the Church had nothing to be complacent about. “We have to acknowledge that there are aspects of our language and our practice that have certainly not made the struggle against HIV and AIDs any easier.”

He urged: “The suffering and privation by extension of any part of the human family is everybody’s issue. It is in recognising that that we find our deepest, most lasting motivation for responding creatively and lovingly to this challenge.”

The Terrence Higgins Trust, the UK’s largest HIV/AIDS charity, welcomed Dr Williams’s statement. Lisa Power, its Head of Policy, said: “It’s vital that Churches join in the fight against HIV, both against the stigma that attaches to people with the virus, and to help prevent its onward transmission. . . The Archbishop’s intervention is a rational and loving contribution to this learning.”

The number of HIV infections in the UK last year was 7800, up from 7450 in 2005 — a rise that goes against the global trend. Ben Duncan, an information officer for the European Centre for Disease Control, said that the virus was now “a major public-health problem in Europe”, where 2.4 million people have HIV.

There were 26,220 new cases of HIV in 2006 in the EU, and about 90,000 new cases across the 53 countries that make up the World Health Organisation’s European region, he said.