Black Churches Take on AIDS Issue

By Alice Turner 16:09, August 18th 2008

Black churches across the country are starting one by one to tackle one of the most important problems of black Americans today: HIV/AIDS. While African Americans, and especially black gay men, are leading by far new HIV infections, the churches serving mainly black Christian communities have remained more or less silent on the rampant spread of the deadly disease.

One of the reasons why pastors have tried to sidestep this delicate issue is that Christian faith does not approve of unfaithfulness and homosexuality, the main reasons behind HIV transmission. This has led in some extreme cases to reverends rejecting HIV positive faithful, telling them to ask forgiveness for their sins (which allegedly caused them to become infected).

Now, things are slowly changing and homophobia is often condemned too by church leaders, as communities open up to those hit by the disease who are yearning for moral and spiritual support from their fellows.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have announced early this month that the number of Americans who are infected with HIV has been undercounted for almost a decade. It appears that in 2006 there were at least 56,300 new HIV infections, significantly more than the 40,000 estimated in previous years. As expected, gay men are the most affected by new HIV infections.

Also, late last month, a report by the Black AIDS Institute has found that the United States spearheads the global response to HIV/AIDS abroad, but neglects problems with the disease at home, especially among black people. The so-called "Black America," which is made up of some 39 million African Americans, would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with HIV. Blacks present a gene variant, which, while ensuring a higher level of protection against some types of malaria, increases the vulnerability to HIV infection.