AIDS Epidemic Spreading Fast
but Uganda and other nations see rates fall
   

Comment on reports of HIV man who may have "cured" himself
Press reports (13th November 2005) about man in London who tested positve for HIV and then (possibly) eliminated HIV from his body

UNAIDS says the AIDS epidemic is spreading twice as fast as five years ago. 3 million people died in 2003 and a further 5 million were infected.  Over 45 million are alive with HIV and another 43 million have already perished. 3 million children are alive with HIV, a number increasing by almost a million a year.  These are still early days in a global pandemic that started relatively recently.  See GRAPHS and more information showing dramatic rise of HIV in many nations and some encouraging falls.
   
The need has never been more urgent to save lives.  India could see more HIV cases over the next 15 years than there have been in the entire world until now. The African AIDS disaster is repeating itself on a vast and tragic scale in Asia, yet with few signs of the kind of multi-level government responses we saw in places like Uganda 15 years ago.  Project guidelines and best practice.

New Partnership with Operation Mobilisation

Dr Patrick Dixon, ACET's founder, recently addressed 650 OM leaders at their global conference in the Netherlands, and a further 200 at OM's Indian training centre in Hyderabad.  George Verwer and Peter Maiden are pushing hard to see HIV issues taken seriously throughout the organisation.  "God has clearly spoken to us about this. We have no time to lose", George said recently.  "AIDS is a vital issue for the church and is part of our mission.  We must do all we can to save lives in places like Africa and Asia and show God's love in action."

In another OM / ACET joint initiative, David Kabiswa flew from Uganda to join one of the OM ships for a week in March, training 230 crew about HIV programmes, so they could take the message to every port they visit over the following months around the cost of East, Southern and West Africa.

New editions of The Truth about AIDS and AIDS and You

Operation Mobilisation and ACET International Alliance have published new editions of Dr Patrick Dixon's The Truth about AIDS and AIDS and You, both of which have inspired many churches to start their own HIV programmes.  The text of both is also available free online. This is an exciting development, drawing on OM's huge publishing expertise.  Their Hyderabad warehouse alone ships out several tons of books every day.

Over 180,000 copies of AIDS and You have already been distributed by many different organisations to those who need them in the poorest nations, with editions in English, Russian, Spanish and French, and others in preparation - including Hindi and Urdu. A further 30,000 copies are being printed - all of which will like the rest be given away. We are able to do this because of generous sponsorship and by printing them in India where the costs are as low as three books for a dollar.

The new version of The Truth about AIDS contains key resource manuals by Tear Fund, VIVA Network, Emmanuel Hospitals Association and Africa Inland Mission, in addition to a completely revised and updated text of the original book which led to ACET's creation in 1988. The different resources if published separately would cost more than $20 to print, but combined into a single publication the package only costs $1-50 - met by sponsors enabling us to supply copies anywhere in the world, in bulk, at no charge.

FREE COPIES OF BOTH BOOKS CAN BE ORDERED IN BULK BY ORGANISATIONS WHILE STOCKS LAST - e-mail:  isdixon@dircon.co.uk

A Cry from the Heart

This moving letter was written to us by a young girl with HIV

“We are still alive, yet we do not live any more”. I plea to you to publish my letter.

I am 18 years old. My name is Olga. I was taken ill of AIDS two years ago. I am in hospital.  Why have you, you adults, thrown us under a tank? Why have you disrupted us with sex, pornography and drugs? We were very children and our fathers offered us to others to bed. And our mothers received money for us, their children. It is you who are guilty in our illnesses and death!

You adults wanted “freedom”, “relaxation” and “enjoyment”. You approved pornography, wanted more money. You advocate “free relations”, doing everything to satisfy your desires. But we are dying! We will never get to know real love, we will not have families, we will not have our own children.

We are still alive, yet we do not live any more in fact. You stole our childhood and our future too. When I meet old people in the street, I have very strange feelings, I cannot even describe them. There is anger, wrath, fear, envy, helplessness and inability to change anything. Too late. We who are young and are dying, do not know what real love is, we do not understand words like “shyness”, “morality”. The meaning of all these words has disapeared both from the schools and the life too.

You were taught their meaning then and that is why you can live 70, 80 and more years. But we will not live these years! We will die young! What for? Why? Four of my friends, used to be my schoolmates, have died already. Youth lays in mortuaries. We are burying each other already.

Why have you not warned us of your “safe sex”? We want to live. We would rather work hard on a field, drive a tractor than drive cars of foreign makes and dying of AIDS. AIDS and syphilis have become something as normal among us as a flue.

We were children, we had no idea how babies are born, we thought that storks bring them. If only did we stay in this children´s ignorance and did not get to know your abuse.

Nobody is going to take you to court on our behalf. You did not kill any of us with your own hands after all. You were disrupting our lives gradually, bringing us up on your “pictures”, your films. In schools you were talking us into how to do “it” safely in cellars and forced on us devastating films and magazines.

You have not stopped that yet, you are going on, destroying lives of even younger children than we were. Have you not had enough? Has not there been enough sacrifice yet?

How grateful I would be now to the one who would have snatched cigarette out of my hand, who would have snatched syringe away from me, who would have slapped my face for offering my body to others, who would have talked to me about all this danger. How little could be done to get me out from under the tank when it was possible still. Please help those who need your help now. Be open for those who are serving these young people.

Olga - Russia 2001, Krasnodar region.