BOB ABERNETHY: We begin today with the enormous, long-ignored, that almost unimaginably severe epidemic of AIDS in southern Africa. This weekend, a United Nations Conference on AIDS begins in South Africa, a fitting place because that country has the most HIV cases and the fastest-growing number of HIV infections of any nation in the world.Here are the best estimates of the disaster. Worldwide, in the past 20 years, 19 million people have died of AIDS.
According to the United Nations, 34 million people are now HIV positive, which, without expensive medication, is fatal in almost all cases. Twenty-five million of these people are in Africa, most of them in the southern countries of the southern cone, where an average of 20 percent of all adults are infected.
Our special report is from South Africa, where Fred de Sam Lazaro found that both officials and churches have been reluctant to face up to the disaster.
FRED de SAM LAZARO: Across South Africa, church leaders like Anglican Bishop Rubin Phillip are sounding a call of despair.
Bishop RUBIN PHILLIP (To Congregation): We who sit in this beloved province of KwaZulu-Natal, know that over 20 percent of the population is HIV positive. The church must rise to this new challenge.de SAM LAZARO: About 80 percent of South Africans are Christian, belonging to the Catholic and to several Protestant denominations. Most churches are grappling with the morality and the reality of a huge HIV epidemic.
Reverend FANO SIBISI: I feel it's one of the darkest periods in the history of this country. Having overcome apartheid, having gained our freedom, we're dying and we are not able to experience it.de SAM LAZARO: The numbers are staggering: about one in 10 South Africans is HIV positive, a figure fast rising to one in four. The vast majority of cases are among blacks, most infected by heterosexual contact.
This 300-bed hospital in rural KwaZulu-Natal has 400 patients. Most have AIDS or related pneumonias or TB. Their infection likely came from exposure to commercial sex in distant urban or mining areas. Under apartheid law, black men were forced to leave their families behind. Now as they die, many leave behind HIV-positive widows and children.Dr. GLENDA GRAY: HIV prevalance amongst children in 1992 was 6 percent, and recently we did a survey, and we found that up to 40 percent of kids admitted to our hospital on every day are HIV infected. And last year, 75 percent of all our deaths in these wards were HIV related.
de SAM LAZARO: Ironically, South Africa's fabled revolution contributed to the HIV epidemic. It opened the nation's doors to exiles and to people from the rest of Africa seeking economic opportunity. The AIDS virus, ravaging much of the continent, came unnoticed and went unaddressed in a country preoccupied with righting historic wrongs.Bishop KEVIN DOWLING (Catholic Diocese of Rustenberg): Apartheid assumed the major focus of so many years. In that sense, other issues took second place because it was a -- just a human rights focus. And we're only catching up now on many other issues since the '94 election. We're only, certainly from government down, realizing the importance of this issue rather recently.
de SAM LAZARO: The government has been widely faulted for its handling of the AIDS crisis. President Thabo Mbeki recently seemed to question whether AIDS is, in fact, caused by HIV infection, a connection most scientists say is unquestioned. The government has also been slow to provide drugs to pregnant, HIV-positive women that would more than cut in half the number of their babies born with HIV. Even the AIDS awareness campaign has yielded distressing results.Ninety-eight percent of South Africans say they're aware of HIV and AIDS and how it's transmitted. However, there's very little evidence that awareness has translated into changed behavior. Fewer than one in 10 women, for example, report using a condom during their last sexual encounters.
That does not surprise Dr. Nelda Swart, a physician working in AIDS care for the Rhema Bible Church, a major evangelical denomination in South Africa.
Dr. NELDA SWART (Christian Service Foundation): You've mentioned the high awareness -- level of awareness, but most of that was done by purely factual information. And to have something like sexuality addressed in a very free environment is, ultimately, nothing more than just giving you a few facts, which isn't going to change anything.de SAM LAZARO: It's here that Dr. Swart and church colleague Margaret Muchai blame churches, which have been unable to talk candidly about what really is driving the epidemic.
Ms. MARGARET MUCHAI (Christian Service Foundation): Well, the church is setting with having to give out food vouchers, or the church is setting with having not just to do the funerals but to take on the burden of taking care of those that have been left behind. I must say that, at the moment, the South African church is very awake.
Ms. NGABANE (Through Translator): The Word of God will be the only answer to this AIDS epidemic, because it needs to change the lifestyle of the person. So whenever we enter the home, we tell them about the Word of God. It helps a lot to change the lifestyle.
Ms. CHARITY MAJIZA (South African Council of Churches): One of our workshops asked, "Have you ventured out and said, when you're burying a person, that this person has died of AIDS?" It's very interesting that people are not comfortable in doing this. They did in some situations. In some situations, they said that "The family has told us not to say the person is dying with AIDS." People would prefer to say somebody's got a slimming disease or TB, for that matter.
Bishop DOWLING: We're looking at it in a holistic way, trying to not simply say that, for example, "Focus all your attention on condoms. That's the way to prevent." We're looking at prevention in terms of education concerning values, concerning respect, concerning people's human rights and then, also, values that we believe in, for example, faithfulness to people, to a partner, abstinence, issues like that, making informed choices.
