"The Lazarus Effect"

With the previous U.S. presidential administration’s plan, PEPFAR, coming under negative scrutiny, funds for Anti Retroviral Drugs (ARV’s) are beginning to run short. This shortage hi-lights the significance of alternative efforts at ARV funding.

The HBO documentary, The Lazarus Effect, is good news if the money being raised is actually getting to the people who need it.

If what Damisa Moyo says in her book, Dead Aid, is right, massive amounts of foreign aid flowing into Africa are not reaching their intended target. Most is being misappropriated and almost as much is ending up in private Swiss bank accounts.





In his article, “At Front Lines, AIDS War Is Falling Apart,” Donald G. McNeil Jr. of the New York Times, wrote, “The last decade has been what some doctors call a ‘golden window’ for treatment. Drugs that once cost $12,000 a year fell to less than $100, and the world was willing to pay.

In Uganda, where fewer than 10,000 were on drugs a decade ago, nearly 200,000 now are, largely as a result of American generosity. But the golden window is closing.

Uganda is the first country where major clinics routinely turn people away, but it will not be the last. In Kenya next door, grants to keep 200,000 on drugs will expire soon. An American-run program in Mozambique has been told to stop opening clinics. There have been drug shortages in Nigeria and Swaziland. Tanzania and Botswana are trimming treatment slots, according to a report by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders.”

Two main factors are contributing to this crisis:

With so much money being spent on other things by wealthy nations, (three trillion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance) the first is tragic enough. It has to do with the effect on traditional donors triggered by the global recession.

The second contributing factor is even more tragic. There is a growing sense, lead by key components of the present USA administration, that more lives will be saved by fighting other, cheaper diseases.

As DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. points out, “Even as the number of people infected by AIDS grows by a million a year, money for treatment has stopped growing.”

McNeil goes on to report, “Under its new Global Health Initiative, the Obama administration has announced plans to shift its focus to mother-and-child health. The AIDS budget was increased by only 2 percent.

The British government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also said they would focus support on mother-child health.

‘The political winds have changed,’ said Sharonann Lynch, chief author of the Doctors Without Borders report. ‘And I don’t believe for a minute it’s just the economic downturn. I think world leaders feel the heat is off and they’re fatigued’.”

Dr. Natasha Astill is a British AIDS specialist working at a remote hospital in Uganda.

She is quoted as saying, “It makes me angry. It feels horrible. Sometimes you wonder if you’re doing people favors. You start them on drugs, you give them hope, and then you’re not sure you can keep it up. We all knew these drugs are for life.” (Mc Neil’s article refers)

No completely adequate alternative to modern ARV’s is available, but we are taking every opportunity to investigate and deploy whatever comes to hand.

We’ve discovered that a combination of a powder made from the leaves of what is known as the Miracle Tree, when combined with daily ingestion of a relatively inexpensive antibiotic, is proving effective in combating the effects of HIV.

Moringa powder provides 69% protein, 3 times as much iron as found in spinach, 4 times the vitamin ‘A’ (beta carotene) found in carrots, 4 times the calcium in milk, 2 times the protein found in milk, 3 times the potassium found in bananas, 7 times the vitamin ‘C’ found in oranges, it has 18 amino acids, including the 8 essential amino acids necessary for the body’s survival but which the body cannot synthesize itself. Moringa also has plenty of omega 3 oils and chlorophyll (which changes acids into alkaline), plus 46 compounds that have antioxidant properties. Moringa can help reduce bad cholesterol and triglycerides, help control blood sugar, and has 36 properties with anti-inflammatory substances, many of which are anti-cancer agents.

Co-trimoxazole (trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole) is a widely available, low-cost antibiotic that’s used in developing countries with limited resources to treat and prevent common infections. In HIV infection, it’s highly effective for treating and preventing against pneumonia and Isospora belli – a human intestinal disease as well as bacterial infections. The antibiotic has anti-malarial properties and also reduced the occurrence of malaria by 26 per cent.
As critical as treatment is, encouraging the decline in new infections is even more important. By the same token, the present up-surge in new infections is something we cannot ignore.
The ABC approach pioneered in Uganda has come under the influence of Western thinking to the point where recent gains in combating new infections are being reversed.
Uganda was "winning the war." They were in the vanguard of meaningful response that was led by the president and his wife. That response put a high premium on abstinence, and had a significant impact in the numbers of new infections.

A significant global shift is underway, however, that is being driven by the wonderful sounding catch-phrase, "Human Rights," but behind the shift is concerted activism from the women's rights and gay rights communities in the West. They argue that the approach in Africa was patriarchal, and stepped on the rights of individuals to express their sexual freedoms the way they wanted to.

Amazingly, the Western view is impacting the global response to the predicament in the global South in a way that is actually reversing the gains that have been made and plunging Africa's people back into a desperate situation.

Miss HIV, an excellent documentary put out by Ethnographic Media (EGM) speaks well to this issue.

Edward C.Green, PH.D. (Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies) said, “We have a different kind of epidemic in the United States. HIV cases are mostly concentrated among a few high-risk groups, but in Africa, most HIV is found in the general population.

Western ideology for AIDS took center stage in 1986, when the World Health Organization established a special program headed by Jonathan Mann, M.D., MPH. He believed the tragedy of AIDS brought with it an historic opportunity. Knowing how AIDS had brought more discrimination for gays in the United States, he successfully placed the struggle of discrimination into the foundation of global AIDS policies. And in 1992, the World Health Assembly resolved that ‘There is no public rationale for any measures that limit the rights of individuals'.”

Edward Green went on to say, "Not only is there a general indictment that we have violated trust and betrayed the people of the third world by letting our ideology get in the way, but we’ve pushed Uganda away from the model that’s worked so well. If you go to Uganda today, the emphasis is on drugs, it’s on condoms, testing … the old ABC program that put real emphasis on A & B, that involved the church, went into the schools ... it’s been largely dismantled.

The evidence is there, that we donors from the major Western agencies have been pushing Uganda in the direction of conforming with the model that we’re using everywhere else."

Edward C.Green, quoted Dr. Graham Stoneburner, who worked for the World Health organization and he immersed in the Uganda data, when he said, "History will look back on this period and say that one of the great abuses of the latter part of the twentieth century was the failure to do AIDS prevention in ways we know are affective."

Dr. Martin Ssempa Makerere (Pastor of the Community Church in Kampala and leader of “PrimeTime”, a Ugandan ministry to young adults, encouraging abstinence and marital faithfulness):

“It’s become, all about human rights … ‘My rights!’ "My right to have sex any time I want!" "It’s become a battle for the rights of the homo-sexual community ... for women’s emancipation.”

An encouraging word is that Dr Martin Piot (UNAIDS Executive Director Under Secretary General of the Unites Nations) has said, "If we don’t increase our investment in prevention, how can the world afford … from a humane perspective, from a moral perspective, from a financial and economic perspective , that every year between 4 and 5 million will become infected?"

A greater principle, however, drives those of us in the forefront of TEAM's response. It is this greater holistic principle that brings us to believe so strongly in a balanced approach to the problem that understands women's rights more in the context of sexual abuse than in terms of sexual freedom and, when confronted with gay rights activist philosophy, understands sexual rights in terms of sexual responsibility. It is a principle that recognizes that the Church has a responsibility toward those infected and affected, and must stand against stigma and discrimination and be a clear advocate both to the Church and of the Church on behalf of those caught up in the grip of the problem .

This balance is also extended in terms of realizing the pre-eminence of Biblical life transformation and life style choices that people take at the heart level. This protects these people from infection. Without a doubt, we will see that as number one priority, not just for "moral" or "spiritual" reasons, but because statistics have proven beyond doubt that it is the ONLY approach to fighting the battle that has any hope of halting AIDS in it's tracks.

ARV's are great, when available, and the ZITA Alliance will no doubt want to address the importance of stepping up to the plate to resource funding for them. But we also do what we can in the meantime, and are serious about getting HIV positive people on a the bi-part regimen of antibiotics and Moringa powder. This is proving to be very effective in keeping the CD4 count low in HIV sufferers. This, coupled with good nutrition, is where we are in many respects in our Africa response.

It really is time for the global Church to stand up and be counted. We are moved to respond out of a humble moral authority that is rooted and grounded in a heart motivation and heart conviction. This is becoming increasingly necessary for addressing issues that are dictating to the ebb and flow of secular response ... and we are not alone, both in the vertical, as well as horizontal sense.