Society an active participant in AIDS education campaign

PAPUA NEW GUINEA — Although it doesn’t make headlines in world news terms, HIV/AIDS infections in Papua New Guinea (PNG) are on a par with those in other Asian countries such as Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar, according to the Roman Catholic aid organisation Caritas Australia.

Communications in Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea, which lies off north-eastern Australia, has more than 800 active languages but relatively few roads, and some 85 per cent of its people live on subsistence farming in isolated rural areas. Of the population of 5.1 million, 4.9 million describe themselves as Christians. Roman Catholics make up 27 per cent, Lutherans 19.5 per cent, the United Church 11.5 per cent , Anglicans 3.2 per cent, and other churches the rest. There is a high degree of ecumenical co-operation and more than half of the rural health work, and nearly all of the training of nurses and community health workers, is carried out by the churches.

Estimates of the actual number of people who are HIV-positive vary widely. At the start of an anti-AIDS campaign in December 2004, Caritas said an estimated 67,000 people were carrying the virus, but others quote lower figures. Leontine Tamate, General Secretary of the Bible Society of Papua New Guinea, describes HIV/AIDS in PNG as being “in an epidemic state of affairs”.

With authorities agreed on that, the country is running an awareness campaign under the auspices of the National HIV/AIDS Council in which the Bible Society of Papua New Guinea is playing an active part.

Originally invited to participate in a workshop to set strategies for the campaign, it now has a role alongside churches, faith-based organisations, NGOs, government departments and agencies, the private sector and the United Nations.

Mrs Tamate says that so far the Bible Society’s “humble contribution” has been to produce a simple monthly pamphlet containing relevant Scriptures and testimonies of people who are living with the infection. “The main purpose is to impress on our people what God intended our bodies for,” she says.

The incidence of AIDS is growing most rapidly among girls aged 14-19 in PNG, and the leaflet is designed for anyone who can read, from school children to adults.

“The purpose is to get them to pay more attention to what God is saying in the Bible with regard to the sacredness of our sexualities and of procreation,” says Mrs Tamate.

She elaborates on the broad purpose with three specific aims:

  • to alert people’s consciences to immoral behaviour and show how
    Christians should behave;
  • to prompt those with loved ones who are HIV-positive to be more
    sympathetic towards them;

  • to make the community as a whole more charitable and help those families
    who are caring for loved ones with the HIV/AIDS infection.

The Society is distributing the pamphlet through the Churches and the National HIV/AIDS Council distribution network.

It is being produced by Mrs Tamate’s daughter Aiva, who is a freelance journalist, and Benstead Bareta, a final-year student at the Christian Leaders Training College in Port Moresby.

The pamphlet forms part of a broader program and the Bible Society intends also to produce posters carrying relevant verses from Scripture to support its HIV/AIDS strategy.

The stigma surrounding people with HIV/AIDS in PNG was highlighted by a story published in January by Australian Associated Press. Describing the mortuary of Port Moresby General Hospital as “crammed with unclaimed bodies”, it said many of them belonged to HIV/AIDS patients whose relatives wanted nothing to do with them. The St John’s Voluntary Service Superintendent contracted to take them for burial in unmarked graves said, “A lot of people wouldn’t even attend a funeral … People here still think you can contract HIV/AIDS just by sitting on a seat used by somebody else.” (WR 392/23 - 04/5.05)