Decent Care and HIV: A Holistic Approach

Abstract

The WHO consultation on decent care and HIV in 2006 testified to humanity’s agonizing effort to defeat one of our age’s common enemies. When HIV was first identified in 1983, it was impossible to imagine its grave consequences for so many lives. We have come a long way since the era of moral opportunists who saw the pandemic as a providential chance to preach their ethics of fear, including those who explained AIDS as an acronym for‘The Almighty Is Destroying Sinners’ and covertly welcomed the scourge as ‘God’s way’ to correct humanity’s moral depravity. Though such voices have died down, an appropriate response to this disease has remained elusive — until now.

This chapter emerged from discussions with the Reverend C. B. Peter, adjunct faculty at St Paul’s University, Limuru, Kenya, who teaches in an MA programme on community care and HIV, under the auspices of the University of Wales, Lampeter.