THE WORST HUMAN CRISIS IN HISTORY

"The AIDS pandemic is the worst human crisis in history if we compare it to previous benchmarks, like the Black Death. The Black Death killed about 20 million people. So far AIDS has killed 25 million and another 45 million people are HIV+ and will die an early death.

"This is clearly the greatest human crisis of our time, and possibly of all history. Such a crisis demands the best of all of us - the church at large and the general public," said Ken Casey, special representative to President George W Bush for the HIV/AIDS Hope Initiative.

Ken spent just 48 hours in Australia 31 July-1 August, on his way from New Zealand to Tanzania. He was meeting with Australian and New Zealand leaders to enhance the world's response to the HIV/AIDS crisis.

In an interview with New Life, Ken said, "World Vision has been doing relief and development work for 50 years working with communities in transformative development. Over the last few years we have realised that the AIDS pandemic has the potential to undo everything that we have done in the last 50 years so HIV/AIDS is our number one priority as an organisation.

"I help organizations around the world in program delivery and advocacy in marshalling our efforts over three tracks: prevention, care and advocacy," said Ken.

Ken said that prevention was primarily focussed on 5-15-year-olds who he described as a "window of hope" to be trained in the life skills that would prevent them from getting infected. He said they were also working on preventing mother to child infection and working with educating high risk groups such as truck drivers, mine workers, construction workers and sex workers.

He said the second track, care, was primarily of orphans and vulnerable children resulting from HIV/AIDS. He said 14 million children had been orphaned due to AIDS and there were probably twice that number whose lives were very vulnerable because their parents were too sick to work or care for them, or because their families were fostering so many AIDS orphans resources were stretched to the limit.

The third track is advocacy. Ken said World Vision wanted to use its influence to speak to people in power at national, state and local levels to help ensure that the public policies adopted and the resources allocated reflected the importance of the impact of HIV/AIDS.

Ken said, "World Vision (WV) is a child focussed organisation. We want to give our best efforts to these children. The church is a critical player in the global response. Christ calls us to help the suffering and the huge numbers involved demand the compassion and response of the church.

"There are also pragmatic reasons for the church to be involved," said Ken. "The church can reach 95% of the people suffering from AIDS. WV can only reach about 30% of them. Also, WV can only stay for a time. The church will be there to help that community for as long as it is needed. It is a sustainable force. Also, the church can address the issues of sexual behavior that can prevent the spread of AIDS. It is the hands and feet of Christ in these communities and can help those affected and infected by the virus.

"WV is a faith-based Christian organisation responding to the people in need. As we address issues of prevention we place a strong emphasis on faithfulness in marriage and abstinence outside it, to prevent becoming infected. We bring a message of hope. Up to 30% of the adults in these communities are HIV+ and they have no access to retroviral drugs or even to medication to deal with the ordinary infections their weak immune systems leave them open to. Therefore they quickly become weak and ill. We are there to provide a very important element of hope," added Ken.

KEN TOLD THREE STORIES.

Mrs Mzamba is a grandmother in northern Zambia. She had five children. Three of them, and their spouses, have died of AIDS and the fourth child is very ill. Between them they have left her with 10 grandchildren she has to care for and she has only a small plot of land on which to grow corn to feed them all. The children are not in school, they have no access to medicines and their diet is very poor. The grandma is physically frail. "This is a story repeated over and over again throughout Africa," said Ken. "Frail and elderly grandparents, who should be being cared for themselves, are left to care for large numbers of grandchildren."

Richard lives in Uganda. When he was 13 his parents both died of AIDS leaving him as head of the household to care for his two younger brothers aged eight and nine. "There is no-one to care for these children. No-one to hug them, to cook for them, to send them to school, to teach them how to grow food to feed themselves. The number of child-headed households throughout the land is just unimaginable," said Ken. "It breaks your heart as you walk away from their hut knowing that no-one is going to come home and care for them at night.

"But in the midst of all this tragedy there are reasons for hope. In Masaka, Uganda, I visited a family where the father has died of AIDS and the mother is very ill. There are eight children aged from 20 down to seven. These children are still positive and vital and have dreams for the future.

"A woman from the village named Marie Christine sits with the family and listens to them. She hugs them and cares for them. She is very poor. She brings them nothing tangible - no food, no clothes, no money. She just holds their hands, cries with them, loves them. But knowing someone cares has made a huge difference to the family. She cannot take away the death of their father or the coming death of their mother, but she has given these children hope for the future instead of despair. We need to celebrate the Marie Christines of this world and pray that there will be many more of them," concluded Ken.

The Hope Initiative was first announced by World Vision International president Dean Hirsch on 1 December 2000. Ken was appointed to lead the initiative in March 2001. Prior to this Ken served with World Vision USA as World Vision USA's senior vice president for strategy, policy and planning.

Details about the Hope Initiative and WV's work with AIDS sufferers and orphans are available from Ian Neil on 13 32 40, e-mail: website: http://www.worldvision.com.au

* Helen Woodall - editor of New Life Christian newspaper