The frontline in Congo’s AIDS war

Widespread gang rape as part of the DRC’s civil war has intensified the AIDS pandemic and left the Anglican Church as the last hope.

Late last month ‘M’ walked into a health clinic, located in the anarchic east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She complained of pain in her lower abdomen. The cause: she had been gang raped by soldiers.

Not just once, but in three separate incidents in the past 12 months.

Sadly, M’s experience is frighteningly common in a country racked by the world’s bloodiest conflict, which has cost the lives of four million people.

“There are so many cases of rape going on by army people,” says Baliesima Kadukima, Director of Medical Services for the Anglican Church in the DRC. “HIV AIDS has been exacerbated by the war. The army is propagating AIDS throughout the country.”

Baliesima oversees the Anglican Church’s three hospitals and 51 health clinics across the DRC, which has a population of over 62 million.

“You have to understand that in DRC we have had a savage civil war for eight years or more and there is no government health program. It has been left to the churches to care for the people,” he says.

Dentistry and AIDS

What if there was only one dentist in the whole of Australia, and unless you used him you risked contracting AIDS? This is the situation for the 20 million people Grodya Dhego, the Church’s dental officer serves in the east of the DRC.

Grodya explained that without dental care many villagers turn to backyard alternatives to relieve pain. The problem is that using unsterilised pliers and other tools heightens the risk of serious infection, blood poisoning and contracting AIDS. The civil war adds to the difficulties.

Out of this unimaginable horror, Brass For Africa, a ministry of Springwood Anglican Church, brought Baliesima and Grodya to Sydney for the eight International Christian Medical And Dental Association (ICMDA) World Congress at Darling Harbour Convention Centre.

The Congress has helped them think through how to provide hope to patients, particularly the one in five people in the war ravaged east now living with AIDS.

Baliesima says contracting AIDS really affects people’s faith. “They ask, ‘Is it right that God can still love me?’”

additional source: The Scotsman

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