God, AIDS, Africa & HOPE

Reflections / Gedanken

11/02/2009 • 1:06 pm Comments Off on 02.11.2009 Your very own face looking at you…

02.11.2009 Your very own face looking at you…

HOPE Gala 09It is amazing to come to town and you are greeted by your own face in town. An experience I still have to come to terms with as it is not usual for me to see myself at any other place as in the bathroom while shaving… 🙂 Well, some photo albums as well, but that is it.  On the other hand people who are in the advertising industry tell me, that it is necessary to put a face to a project – and in this case it is me. Ok, I don’t mind if this helps the cause of HOPE Cape Town and brings people to learn about the project, to understand the situation in South Africa and to encourage them to help in a way they feel comfortable with.

What I don’t like if people see me as a role model or similar – I don’t think that is no good. I am just me and I don’t strive to achieve being an example – what I want to encourage people is only that they live their own lives, find their very own destiny. And as in every life there is black and white and so much grey in between. We shouldn’t strive to be saints in the common sense of the word – we should strive to be humans. And we should deal with each other as such humans – also when it comes to tolerate and forgive the darker sides of oneself and around oneself.Right?? 🙂

Filed under: General, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Networking, Reflection, Society and living environment, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , ,

10/27/2009 • 10:30 am Comments Off on 27.10.2009 The state of the health care system in SA

27.10.2009 The state of the health care system in SA

An insight into the health system of South Africa is given by the following article published by IOL and spread throughout the country – this article speaks for itself:

South Africa’s public hospitals are in a bleak state with failing equipment, a lack of basic consumables and dwindling numbers of doctors, Parliament heard on Wednesday.  Professor Bongani Mayozi, the head of internal medicine at the University of Cape Town, told the portfolio committee on health it was taking up to three days for patients to get a bed in a public hospital. “It takes about 24 hours a day for us to put 50 percent of people into a bed,” he said. “These people are sitting on a chair or lying on a trolley. They are very sick. They need to be admitted. Some people wait up to three days to get into a bed. “We regard this situation as completely unacceptable. Something that you would not wish on your mother or father.” Mayozi said surgical lists in many centres had been cut, equipment had not been renewed and there had been an overall decrease in tertiary level beds. The capacity to train new doctors had also been severely diminished. “When you go to war you need troops. You can’t fight a war without soldiers.”
South Africa is producing 0.58 doctors per 1 000 people, he said. Brazil and Mexico, with a similar gross domestic product per capita, are producing nearly two doctors per 1 000.
“As a result of this South Africa’s infant mortality rate is a lot higher than it should be and more people are dying from infectious diseases,” he said. Mayozi said the situation had arisen due to an “increasing demand” with “diminishing resources”. “When one looks at the reasons for the lack of progress, they are not difficult to find. They are related to under-investment to our public health sector over the past 15 years.” Andries Stulting, the acting head of the school of medicine at the University of the Free State, said the province’s health care situation is in a dire position. “There is a collapse of systems in the Free State. TB, HIV, primary health care, hospital services, training platforms, research, you name it, we are declining.  “We can’t do elective surgery anymore. Patients with hernias and cataracts. They don’t seem to be emergencies, so we cannot operate. People go blind and people can’t do their work.  “We don’t have basic things like eye pads, eye shields, medications… or should we keep quiet because we can be reprimanded?
“I hope I can give you some good news, but at the moment there is none.” –

Filed under: HIV Treatment, Medical and Research, Politics and Society, Reflection, Society and living environment, Uncategorized, , ,

10/26/2009 • 9:18 am Comments Off on 26.10.09 new week, new ventures

26.10.09 new week, new ventures

While this post is coming alive, I am on my way to Frankfurt to meet with representatives of the AIDS action alliance to discuss possible involvement at the 2nd ecumenical church day in Munich in May 2010 and the World AIDS Conference in Vienna. Mid November we have our annual planing meeting with HOPE Cape Town and then most travel arrangements must be decided on. Monday Frankfurt, Tuesday/Wednesday Bitburg and Wednesday eve Aachen are the next stations of my travel – Bitburg with a talk @ the Lion’s Club and various encounters and talks with the students and teachers of the St. Willibrord Gymnasium regarding the work of HOPE Cape Town and obviously touches the general situation in South Africa.  In Aachen I will talk about “HIV and AIDS as sign of the times” and discuss a possible theology of HIV and AIDS for our days.  All encounters create the opportunity to function as a bridge between South Africa and Europe. This becomes more and more important. In my talks in Berlin I once again realised how necessary it is that information is floating freely and honestly between South Africa and Germany to foster the development of relationships between the two countries which are helpful to the people and not only to the ruling class. Sometimes the European or German partners are very quick with solutions to our problems between Cape Town and Johannesburg – forgetting the different way, people in the South experience their realities. South Africa has a lot still to learn and to develop, be it that politicians are team player and not lone warriors trying to gain as much as possible as long as they are in office. But also the cooperation between NGO’s and government needs improvement and also here, the working mechanism developed in Germany between those parties, could have an assisting factor for us at the bottom of Africa.

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Networking, Politics and Society, Society and living environment, , , , , , , , , , , ,

10/21/2009 • 11:12 pm Comments Off on 21.10.2009 Take the survey if you are HIV positive

21.10.2009 Take the survey if you are HIV positive

A survey about stigma and HIV and AIDS – help to assess the problem with your own experience:

THE TROUBLE WITH STIGMA

http://www.poz.com/phpESP/public/survey.php?name=POZ158_October_2009_Survey

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, Society and living environment, , ,

10/19/2009 • 12:12 pm 1

19.10.2009 news in between: Condoms are not reliable in fight against HIV, says African cardinal

It just crossed my laptop screen while in Rome and I want to share it without further comment:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) : Condoms are not always effective in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, said Cardinal Peter Turkson of Cape Coast, Ghana.

Abstinence, fidelity in marriage and universal access to antiretroviral drugs are the strategies the church continues to promote in the fight against AIDS, he said. The cardinal, who Cardinal Turkson copyright CNSwill turn 61 Oct. 11, made the comments during a Vatican press conference Oct. 5, presenting some of the issues to be discussed during the second special Synod of Bishops for Africa. Cardinal Turkson was asked about the AIDS epidemic in Africa and what position the synod will take, specifically concerning the use of condoms in HIV prevention. He said when “people propose the use of condoms it becomes effective only in families where they are going to be faithful.” However, condoms give “people a false sense of security, which rather facilitates the spread of HIV/AIDS,” he said.

Condoms cannot be relied upon to provide 100-percent protection against HIV transmission because “there are condoms which arrive in Ghana, which in the heat and whatever burst during sex,” he said. Because there is always a chance condoms might break during sexual intimacy, he is reluctant to recommend condom use even to married couples in which one partner is affected with HIV, he said. The priorities for African bishops at the synod will remain “abstinence and loyalty and fidelity” within marriage, he said. During pastoral counseling, he said he presents the issues and discusses them with the person seeking advice, which “allows the person to decide, to (make) his own decision.” He said he does not “undervalue the possibility that somebody who has AIDS recognizes his own Christian commitment (and) would simply just decide to refrain from sex,” even if he or she were in a faithful marriage, in order to prevent the spread of HIV. “Some would in such a situation have advised the use of condoms by a partner who has HIV so that it doesn’t spread, but again, in our part of the world, even the use of condoms is sometimes risky,” he said.

“If we have proper, top quality condoms, then one can probably with certainty speak about” the effectiveness of an infected partner using condoms, “but that is also not the case” in Ghana, he said. Cardinal Turkson said he would rather see the resources spent on manufacturing and providing prophylactics to Africa be earmarked for subsidizing antiretroviral drugs for the people there. “Let us use those resources to support the production of antiretroviral drugs so (they) would be more available to people,” he said. “That’s probably the big favor that we can do for the people suffering from HIV/AIDS.”

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, HIV Prevention, Society and living environment, , , , , , , , , , ,

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