AAFI calls for PNG HIV/AIDS help

The Australian AIDS Fund Incorporated, arguably Australia's smallest (and Catholic) agency specialising in HIV/AIDS care, has responded to an SOS from Papua New Guinea to fund the purchase of urgently needed adult nappies for patients in the HIV ward of the Port Moresby General Hospital.

The agency also has helped feed some of the ward's poverty-stricken patients and provided bed screens where before there had not been even one to share between up to 70 patients in the HIV/AIDS ward. (The hospital's own plight speaks for itself: on Monday, April 24, the unclaimed bodies of 28 children from its overflowing morgue had to be buried)

Now The Australian AIDS Fund believes that Caritas Australia, on the heels of its Lenten Project Compassion appeal, should make "an urgent and significant cash donation" to fund HIV/AIDS care work in Port Moresby, describing the PNG capital as the "Orphan Annie" of the Caritas HIV/AIDS effort in PNG. To date, the fund's direct appeal to Caritas Australia has not yielded any promises.

AAFI founder/president, Brian Haill told Online Catholics, "It's quite bewildering for any observer to see Caritas Australia spotlighting its HIV/AIDS work upcountry in the Madang area as it did in this year's Project Compassion when the need in the capital is so desperate.

"There needs to be a full-on focus responding to the needs of the HIV infected in the city's general hospital and funding for other such practical measures in the capital. At last count, Port Moresby was bearing the brunt of the nation's new HIV infections, recording almost 70 percent of the total".

According to Mr Haill, PNG's only HIV/AIDS hospice which is on the edge of the capital and under the care of Franciscan priest, Fr Jude Ronayne-Forde, also is in need of a helping hand to help meet operational costs. (The Australian AIDS Fund helped to establish and furnish the San Michel hospice in the Bethany complex there.)

Fr Jude has given The Australian AIDS Fund a special wish-list which the agency has released to Online Catholics.

* In the area of prevention, he hopes to set up HIV/AIDS committees in each of the parishes and to publish what he'll call "Yumi na HIV Handbook", an awareness information book with a Christian perspective to be made available throughout the archdiocese. He also wants to run awareness and prevention programmes for youth. The total cost of eight of these awareness programmes is about $Aus16,000.

* He's also looking for about $3000 for PLWHA support work - the group to be known as "Yumi Sapot Group" – to facilitate monthly gatherings that will provide a meal, bus fares and a small handout of food.

* The Bethany complex and the San Michel hospice also need help to accommodate about 12 people at any one time.

* And then there's the help they need for the (Port Moresby) General Hospital food programme.

Mr Haill says a cash injection of $100,000 would work wonders for Fr Ronayn-Forde's work, enabling him to peek into the year ahead as well as to meet the desperation of the moment.

"No one really knows how many people there are in PNG living with HIV/AIDS, but few would doubt the number's not far short of 140,000", he said.

“It shouldn't be too long before Caritas Australia knows if this year's Project Compassion has topped last year's $7 million for what is billed as Australia's largest annual humanitarian fundraising appeal.

"Australian Catholics can be justly proud of the work of Caritas Australia and its development programmes in some 50 countries, but this critical need on Australia's geographic doorstep needs prioritising without delay. Fr Jude's wish-list seems to be a modest ask. As a parish contributor to Project Compassion, myself, Caritas, how about it?"