Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service) - In view of a Conference in Vilnius, in Lithuania, 16 and 17 September, the European Commission has issued a report in which AIDS emerges as a serious problem. Fides spoke with Elisabetta Garuti, general co-ordinator of the “Progetto Rainbow” started by the John XXIII community to fight AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. Fides asked her about Europe, Italy in particular.
“I coordinate a programme to help AIDS orphans in Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania and I work mainly to help people Sub-Saharan countries. In my work, here in Italy I visit schools and parishes and when I ask about AIDS I am surprised to hear that Italian children know little or nothing about AIDS. In a high school I once asked some pupils what they knew about AIDS, how the virus how spreads etc. Their answers were vague. They seemed to think that the virus affects mainly homosexual people, something which is not true. I was also dismayed to see that Italian schools have no information campaigns in about this illness of which we have seen only to tip of the iceberg, as a leading world expert professor Gallo said some years ago. In fact the epidemic has still to evolve and it is spreading. In my opinion in Italy there is the false conviction that AIDS is under control, it has been defeated and is a problem which concerns only drug addicts and homosexuals.
I think one of the main causes for the spread of AIDS in Italy is that no one speaks about it. Young people are not informed, family men continue to frequent prostitutes and there is always the danger of infected needles used by drug addicts and homosexual relations”, Ms Garuti concludes.
From 1995 to 2003 the number of reported cases of HIV/AIDS in Europe doubled. The rates of infection in certain countries in Eastern Europe are among the highest in the world. In western Europe at the end of 2003 there were 580,000 HIV/AIDS patients, less than half the number in eastern Europe where there were 1,300,000 HIV/AIDS cases, 860,000 in the Russian Federation alone. In Russia and Ukraine one out of every 100 adults is infected.
In western Europe, Italy is the country with the highest number of HIV+ about 140, 000 followed by France with 120,000. In eastern Europe the number has soared. In Estonia and in Lithuania, AIDS strikes mainly young people at a rate unequalled even in Africa: 80% of HIV/AIDS infected persons are under.
The main cause is sexual transmission although in some countries, particularly in Western Europe, according to the EU Report, the use of infected needles by drug addicts is the main cause for the propagation of the epidemic.
The document drafted by the Commission intends to boost efforts to prevent the spread of the virus, to increase efforts to help HIV/AIDS patients in poor countries and obtain access to the new vaccines and therapy, to improve co-ordination of prevention programmes in individual countries and also to obtain more funds for research in this field.
So far the European Commission has assigned more than one billion Euro to support programmes to fight and prevent HIV/AIDS. (AP) (11/9/2004 Agenzia Fides; Righe: 53; Parole: 656)
