Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Regional HIV/AIDS Conference that USAID is sponsoring for faith-based groups in Southern Africa. You are leaders in your field from nine different countries. As such, you are entrusted with key responsibilities and opportunities to motivate and model your faith's concern for people in your communities.
We hope this conference will help you to open doors so people in your countries will learn to prevent, live with and manage HIV and AIDS. We expect to have an enlightening next few days together. We are counting on your active participation in Challenging Faith-Based Communities towards HIV and AIDS actions that will make a difference to people living in Africa.
Before I proceed, I want to extend a very special welcome to the Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Reverend Njongonkulu Ndungane. Despite your very busy schedule, we are grateful that you can grace us with your presence to deliver the keynote address this morning. A number of special guests have joined us for this conference. Let me mention that Professor Denise Ackerman will open the proceedings tomorrow.
I'd like to read an extract from the "AIDS Brief for Professionals: Religious Leaders":
"AIDS is not asking anything new of the religious community, rather AIDS is confronting us with the necessity of becoming fully the kind of people we have been called to be."
As you know, the purpose of this workshop is to strengthen and deepen the expertise of selected leaders from a range of faith-based organizations. We want to help equip you to move forward from planning to implementing bold and innovative HIV and AIDS programmes within your communities. You have a strategic role to make a positive difference in tackling this life-threatening epidemic amongst your congregations.
I've thought a lot about HIV/AIDS and the lives it has already claimed...the families it has destroyed...the childhoods it has crushed. My mind took me back to Kenya "quite a while ago", when I was a Peace Corps volunteer. I lived and worked with rural high school girls who wanted nothing more than to get an education. Seeing the widespread health and nutrition needs every day and the indomitable spirit of these villagers to overcome their obstacles motivated me to pursue a career in public health.
After earning my professional health credentials, I returned to Africa and worked in Cameroon for awhile, promoting maternal health. STIs-sexually transmitted infections-were debilitating scores of women and men at that time. STIs are still a major threat today. Linked with HIV and AIDS, untreated STIs are a significant public health problem.
HIV and AIDS is having a massive impact on all sectors and spheres of our Southern African societies. HIV and AIDS consume our limited resources-not just financially, but socially, emotionally and spiritually. You are acutely aware that HIV and AIDS pose critical problems for the region. I think we all know that about 90% of all babies born HIV positive enter the world right here in sub-Saharan Africa...that 85% of the world's HIV positive women live here, in sub-Saharan Africa. And finally that the life expectancy in the region has decreased, on average, by about 20 years. This means that people who would have lived to 65 years of age will now most likely only reach the age of 45. How many of our children will die before they see the age of 15? Some of the highest prevalence rates in the world occur right here--in Southern African.
Who can deny this killer disease is a crisis? It is an emergency, a life- and community-threatening problem, and a country-threatening problem for which we urgently need to find solutions.
We must not run and hide when we hear, "HIV and AIDS". These words are a call to action, for all of us. HIV and AIDS challenge us to unite as partners to fight a common enemy that threatens humanity. This workshop exemplifies ways in which we all can begin to work together. It has long been recognized that the Faith-Based Community, when mobilized, can be one of our strongest weapons in the battle against AIDS. Our faith becomes an instrumental tool to reach people in our communities. What is especially heartening, as I look around the room, is that we have leaders representing a number of faiths within the region. Multiple denominations have come together around a common cause. Let us be proud of this step forward and build further stepping stones to bridge the raging force that robs the very breath of life.
USAID's Regional HIV/AIDS Program for Southern Africa, also known as "RHAP", is hosting this workshop. RHAP works to address HIV/AIDS in the region by implementing programs at those vital borders of Botswana, Zambia, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, South Africa, Malawi and Namibia. These programs target vulnerable populations including poor women, truck drivers, miners and youth. RHAP seeks to develop both formal and informal leadership within the region to promote programs and policies to combat HIV and AIDS. One of the aims of this workshop is to promote and support leadership in the region. We recognize the leadership role that you all play in your communities.
Many of you attending this workshop were with us in Uganda last October as we taught counseling and listening skills at a five-day course. We appreciate your accounts about how you are using these skills meaningfully in your communities. Others of you attended a capacity and skills building workshop here at the Kopanong Hotel in November last year.
RHAP conceptualized these two initial meetings to expose you to new skills and ideas with respect to HIV and AIDS, and to empower each one of you to take something practical back to your communities. Something, which not only would provide some form of comfort to your people, but would also strengthen the ability of your organisation to offer or set up successful care and support structures.
This follow up workshop once again brings you together with expectations. We hope that you build on and strengthen the skills you gained previously. Be inspired, think outside the box and be enabled to return to your communities further armed with resources to continue in the fight against HIV and AIDS.
As leaders within your communities I believe you have the will and the means to inspire and support your constituencies to address and overcome some of the devastating results of this epidemic. You hold in your hands the power to influence a change in attitudes, which in turn will result in erasing the stigma and discrimination in all spheres of community life. By setting an example, you can promote the ideal of knowing one's HIV status so people can make responsible choices and live their lives accordingly. You can also influence a climate that will enable people to live openly and positively with HIV. We hope you will encourage support programmes to be set up for men, women and children who are HIV positive or dealing with the daily difficulties of full blown AIDS.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I must tell you that I was so pleased to be asked to welcome you here today. This is a very special occasion for me, as I know it will be for you. We are honored to have with us the Most Reverend Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane. Meeting Archbishop Ndungane is an unforgettable experience
He is indeed a hero in this struggle against HIV and AIDS. He is one of the most inspiring role models in the region and even the world. Over the past few years, the Archbishop has committed himself to speaking out, to breaking the silence against HIV and AIDS by using his beliefs and his position to advocate for change. Amongst other actions, he has pushed for free access for pregnant mothers to Nevirapine to prevent mother to child transmission. He recently formed an alliance with the SA Catholic Bishops Conference, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the South African Council of Churches and COSATU to advocate for increased public awareness and response to the HIV/AIDS challenge.
The Archbishop has set an important example by being tested publicly for HIV/AIDS. He never loses an opportunity to raise public awareness of issues surrounding the disease, even if it means flying into a city for the day to march alongside fellow activists. Having long campaigned in the international arena for the cancellation of debt for developing countries and the alleviation of poverty, he has acquired international standing among world leaders and the economic sector in particular. In the past 18 months, the Archbishop has crusaded tirelessly to alert this influential network-including the World Economic Forum-to the implications of the AIDS pandemic.
We can all understand and applaud that his fellow archbishops worldwide have commissioned Archbishop Ndungane to spearhead a campaign on behalf of more than 70 million Anglicans to bring about a generation free from AIDS.
Despite the Archbishop's busy schedule, his staff told me that he agreed to deliver the keynote address for this workshop because of his profound belief in the ability of you- leaders of faith based communities in the region-to positively influence the epidemic. He believes you can and WILL make a difference amongst millions of Africans who live in your communities and countries. I am eager to hear the Archbishop's piercing words that will lead us forward to alter the course of HIV/AIDS in this part of the world.
We appreciate his presence and support.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to welcome Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane.
Thank you.
