Anti-AIDS organizations

[ChangingHeart]

What should the Catholic response be to a request from a Protestant organization to help financially combat AIDS in Africa, or elsewhere in the world, where innocent children are being orphaned as a result of this AIDS epidemic?

I realize that we should be giving people, and particularly sensitive to the plights of orphans and widows, but at the same time, what if these Protestant organizations promote contraception to help combat AIDS? I’m not saying that they necessarily do, but if in theory they did, should we give to such a cause, for the sake of the orphans?

Should we first perhaps ask the charity organization for information on exactly what they do to help combat AIDS? How would it make us look as Catholics if we were to say, “Since you support contraception, I can’t help you help these poor orphans?” Would that make it look as if we place legalism and “rules,” ahead of loving our neighbors as ourselves? Would that be pouring gasoline on the fire of what may be a common negative stereotype that Protestants may perceive about Catholics?

Are there any Catholic organizations that provide opportunities SPECIFICALLY to combat AIDS?

I get multiple requests from multiple Protesant charities to help financially support multiple good causes. When there are children in need, it is hard to turn down the chance to help. At the same time, however, would giving to a Protestant charity that may convey the tainted Protestant gospel message to those who they are helping be ultimately beneficial? This is an issue I’m struggling with, now.

 

[ribozyme]

One solution, I guess, is to support a Catholic organization.

But one unfortunately stereotype I derive from the Catholic opinion about HIV is that are mainly concerned with supporting their religious agenda against contraception instead of actually helping.

I wonder if Catholic AIDS charities are more concerned with providing reliable antiretrovirals (not Matthias Rath’s vitamins) than in promoting abstinence. Of course, you need to also train competent doctors who can administer the drugs and encourage patients to follow their regiment so resistance (has been observed in HIV integrase (recently with raltegravir), protease, and reverse transcriptase) to this rather refractory malady wouldn’t develop.

 

[ribozyme]

I also found this about adherance to HAART in Africa.

Although Africans take ART more faithfully that North Americans, there is room for improvement. Here is where the second review is instructive [4]. The authors identified 84 studies from rich and poor countries that qualitatively or quantitatively identified factors impeding or facilitating adherence to ART. The impeding factors in rich and poor countries were familiar ones: patients’ aversion or forgetfulness about medicines; lack of trust in health workers; fears about AIDS or its treatment; and emotions of isolation.

…

[F]or developing countries, “financial constraints” towered above the other reasons why poor patients may fail to adhere to ART [anti-retroviral therapy]. That is cruelly ironic, because the same international development policy makers who rejected the idea that poor people could adhere to ART also worked for financial donors such as USAID and the World Bank, and their passionate arguments against ART stalled the delivery of the one variable that helps adherence—money.

Where is the flaw that allowed speculation to get ahead of evidence in development policy making, and to reach the baseless conclusion that Africans could not adhere to ART, or needed to be commanded paternalistically (e.g., “you must abstain from alcohol”) to adhere to ART, when no such conclusion would be reached for rich people? More to the point, how can one recognize when a particular development policy is so baseless and speculative, the better to abandon it?

A serviceable answer, I believe, is that one should be highly suspicious whenever development policy makers sound dismissive of the people whom they are hired to help… I believe that the views of Natsios and the World Bank and Thai officials, speculating that Africans could not adhere to ART, were dismissive in just this way.

Dismissing patients in this way leads to a lower standard of medical care… We now know that Africans are capable of all these things—but overcoming the dismissals and excuses took years, during which millions died.

medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040083

 

[Dale_M]

Are there any Catholic organizations that provide opportunities SPECIFICALLY to combat AIDS?

Catholic AIDS Action was established with the help of the Namibian Bishops Conference. It only works in one nation, but it is focused on HIV/AIDS.

 

[ChangingHeart]

I realize that this topic may not be as exciting as pornography or masturbation, and I thank those of you who have replied, but I am really hoping to get some more replies. This is NOT a hypothetical. I am really debating whether I should give to an organization that may support contraception, and just in general, whether to give to organizations that spread a Protestant gospel.

Obviously, there is Catholic Charities, but what Catholic organizations, if any, help a variety of causes as significant, as say, World Vision. I would so much rather help the needy through charities that are Catholic, but it is the Protestant charities that keep asking for my support, and should I neglect the needy in that manner?

 

[Bennie_P]

crs.org/_images/page-layout/interior-page-header-logo.gif
crs.org/hiv-aids/

Give here - groups that support conceptives as a solution, most likely also has ties to abortion and population control initiatives. Though many may have their hearts in the right place, they are lead by “quick” fixes and misguided ideas about how to stop aids. The only solution toward total eradication will be re-enforcement and acceptance of morality. When aids first hit the United States they thought education of the general public about “safe” sex could contain it, but those that where at the most risk ignored the warnings and still do.

Once you start donating they too will ask for your donations on a regular basis. Check out the links and see if they are spending their money well.

crs.org/hiv-aids/pubs/HIV072106_e.pdf

 

[Dale_M]

I would like to recommend Sant’Egidio whose program is focused on Mozambique, but the program is comprehensive and seeks to remedy the many problems which are contributing to Mozambique’s high HIV incidence.

However, one point in their program states that they provide
“Prevention and care of the diseases linked to Aids (opportunistic infections, sexually-transmitted diseases).”

I can’t be sure that they do not provide or advocate condoms.

 

[urban-hermit]

Catholic Medical Mission Board is good I think
cmmb.org/
They just sent me an e-mail reminding me that December 1st is World Aids Day.

You could also contribute to any CATHOLIC African Mission group, as they all teach Christian chastity as part of their evangelization. Some in the AIDS relief field have pointed out that Roman Catholic and Muslim countries in Africa have lower rates of HIV infection than Protestant or pagan African nations do. While we hear often lately the already-tired cannard that “correlation does not prove causation”, it is nevertheless reasonable to assume that religions which place a greater emphasis on adherance to moral behavior would naturally prevent the transmission of a venereal disease such as HIV.
missionariesofafrica.org/challenges/aids1.html

It takes some work to investigate these groups, but it is well worth taking the time to find a Catholic organization to contribute to instead of the “easy” choice to just answer the Protestant appeals you (and I) find stuffed into our mailboxes, because even Christian organizations, if they fall into the error of handing out condoms, can become the problem rather than the solution. In addition to the fact that it is a serious sin for a Catholic to promote mortal sin among others, there is more and more evidence that handing out condoms causes HIV more often than it prevents it because it retards the process of changing behavior, which is the only way AIDS will ever be stopped, in favor of a “solution” that is really a form of Russian Roulette, where the condom will, sooner or later, break or slip or not be used.
Rethinking AIDS Prevention, by Edward C. Green

 

[ribozyme]

What about Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières )? I doubt they adhere to the no contraception directive of Catholicism, but they have done some noble work regarding mitigating the HIV epidemic and promoting awareness.

Why should the organization be Catholic?

 

[HOPEFUL_IN_UK]

If I were you, I’d try to find out exactly what the organization does. I wouldn’t be too upset if, among other things, they also distributed condoms. If an organization did something like, say, distributing medical supplies so that a clinic could use a fresh syringe on each patient instead of re-using dirty needles, or funded an orphanage, or helped distribute HIV medication, and also distributed condoms, but I overall thought they were an efficient organization that was reaching people who desperately needed clean needles or orphanages, I wouldn’t worry about the condoms.

ETA: that is to say, I wouldn’t feel scrupulous about the condoms. However, supporting a specifically Catholic organization may be the perfect answer.

If asked to donate to any particular organization, you can do what most of us always do, just say “no.” Surely you say no to all sorts of things, right? There’s no need to say why - you can just say, “I already donate to some other charities, including one that deals with AIDS in third-world countries.”