The Church reduced to silence” “

The 14th International Conference on’Aids, held in recent days in Barcelona (7-12 July), underlined the progress being made in the prevention of this disease which is currently spreading in Africa in an alarming manner. To curb its advance, according to the United Nations, 10 billion dollars are needed, 7 billion more that currently available. 40 million people world-wide, especially in the poor countries, are infected by the virus. There are 13 million orphaned children because one or both of their parents have died of Aids. Unaids, the UN programme for the campaign against Aids, forecasts that in the course of the next 20 years, 70 million people will die of Aids. Over 17,000 delegates, including doctors, Aids patients, politicians and representatives of NGOs, spoke about the disease and its threats at Barcelona, asking that the costs of therapies be reduced and urging the need to find new drugs and develop prevention policies. We asked the Spanish physician Josep Maria Simón , representative in Europe of the international Federation of Catholic medical associations (FIAMC), what is the Church’s attitude to this pandemic. At what point has research on Aids reached in Spain? “At the level of general palliative therapies, Catalonia is among the world leaders, as also in specific treatments for Aids and in attention to seropositive children. On the other hand, in the field of research, the University of Navarre discovered some time ago that the children of mothers with the virus can survive without contracting the infection”. Do you think it’s possible to curb the advance of Aids in some way? “First, we need to distinguish between the infection caught through infected needles or by sexual transmission. In both cases the young need to learn to be responsible. The age of beginning sexual relations should be deferred; the young should abstain from sex before marriage and believe in marital fidelity and in monogamy. It has been ascertained that the campaigns for the distribution of condoms have not produced their hoped-for results. We need to insist instead on attitudes of prevention, and on education capable of bringing home to young people the risks of promiscuity”. What needs to be done to facilitate access to drugs? “At Barcelona we emphasized the importance of providing access to anti-Aids drugs through suitable policies. Awareness-raising is important, as also the need to insist on transparency in funding. One of the problems at these major conferences is that no one controls the flow of funds”. The voice of the Church was little to be heard at this conference. Why is that? “We consider the silence forced on us was scandalous. The Catholic Church was largely absent from the organization of the conference, and yet we know that Catholics and Protestants in the USA and in Germany, for instance, are very active in this campaign. Unfortunately this work is passed over in silence at the official level. According to the UN, one Aids patient in four is cared for by Catholic institutions. We have programmes, aid, campaigns, patient care, work groups, prayer groups…The Church is present on this front, but unfortunately was reduced to silence during this conference”.