Article: Senator Helms Pledges More Attention to HIV/AIDS In Africa

22 February 2002

Article: Senator Helms Pledges More Attention to HIV/AIDS In Africa

Speaks at faith-based meeting; Mrs. Museveni attended

By Jim Fisher-Thompson
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington - Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, has told a faith-based conference on HIV/AIDS that he is sorry he has not paid more attention to the pandemic that has killed millions of Africans, creating a million orphans in Uganda alone. Listening in the audience was Ugandan First Lady Janet Museveni.

Helms addressed more than 1,000 frontline AIDS workers, church and government leaders meeting in Washington February 17-21 to discuss a religious and community-based approach to combating HIV/AIDS, the sexually-transmitted virus that the United Nations estimates has killed 24 million people since it was first identified 1981.

In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 17 million people have died of the disease, 2.3 million of them just last year, according to U.N. figures.

Helms, the former head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, "I'm so ashamed I've done so little" to support the battle against AIDS, which has disproportionally affected sub-Saharan Africa. He added, "I confess I will do better than I have done in the past and I will work together with you."

The February 20 luncheon, which also featured a speech by Ugandan First Lady Janet Museveni, was sponsored by Samaritan's Purse - an international Christian relief organization - operated by Franklin Graham, son of Evangelist Billy Graham.

Samaritan's Purse currently provides aid to victims of war, disease, natural disaster and poverty in more than 100 countries. Its AIDS projects include supporting homes for children orphaned by the disease in Romania, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe. It also funds AIDS prevention and care programs in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda and Sudan.

Helms credited his newfound concern about the disease's effect on Africa to recent conversations he had with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and rock star Bono of the Irish band U2.

During a recent talk in his office, the Senator said "Kofi Annan volunteered that he had asked his office to work more carefully from now on with Franklin Graham" and his organization to fight AIDS in Africa.

Helms said he also met with rock star Bono, whom he admitted he had never heard of, for a conversation about the impact of HIV/AIDs on Africa. The Senator said he and the musician met for two hours in his Capitol Hill office during which "Bono told me there were 2002 verses in the Bible instructing us to help our fellow man."

The Senator added that his budding friendship with Bono resulted in his attending a U2 concert at the MCI Center in Washington. Helms pointed out that several of his grandchildren, who went with him, enjoyed the music more than he did.

Introducing Mrs. Museveni, Helms said, "what a wonderful job she's doing using the right things...Biblical values." Because of her efforts and those of her husband, President Yoweri Museveni, "the spread of AIDS as an infectious disease has been cut in half" in Uganda, he pointed out.

Mrs. Museveni told her audience she brought a "message of hope" from Uganda about "great strides" that have been made in the battle against disease and the ignorance surrounding HIV/AIDS. "We in Uganda have worked so hard," she said, and today there are almost 2,000 organizations in the nation, "including faith-based" agencies, fighting the disease through prevention programs based on spiritual values.

Touching on other public health measures used to stem the spread of the infection, Museveni said "condoms have a role to play" in reducing the spread of the virus through sexual contact but the main means of combating AIDS must involve changes in behavior emphasizing sexual abstinence and fidelity in marriage. After all, "It is our obligation to impart values to our youth," Museveni declared.

Acknowledging that Uganda had done "a tremendous job" in reducing the AIDS infection rate, Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Claude Allen told the luncheon "the United States recognizes that AIDS knows no boundaries and it does not stop at any nation's borders."

Helping Africans battle AIDS is therefore important "to our national security," he added, and that is why the U.S. government is spending $300 million in 2001 to fight it and other infectious diseases worldwide and why President Bush has asked Congress for a further $200 million for next year.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Andrew Natsios also spoke during the conference and announced a number of grants to community-based anti-AIDS organizations overseas including: the Women's Missionary Society of Southwest Zambia and the Episcopal Church of Burundi Diocese of Gitega.

He told the gathering: "These small grants will go long way toward helping local communities in the fight against HIV/AIDS."