Rome (Fides Service) – The CUAMM statement on fighting AIDS in Africa identifies the sight against AIDS wit the fight against Poverty and that activities to stop the pandemic must be part of Primary Health Care.
These general criteria are respected in all CUAMM programmes and especially in its projects to fight AIDS centre on the prevention of HIV/AIDS mother/child infection. The project AIDS-FREE BIRTH IN TANZANIA ” is part of a network of maternity and infant care organised by 13 maternity centres in the poor outskirts of Dar Es Salaam which CUAMM has helped to rehabilitate and for which it guarantees good functioning.
CUAMM works closely with Pasada a diocesan organisation active in the field of HIV/AIDS in Tanzania to provide the best that can be offered today to Africa in the field of AIDS, health-education, test e counselling, assistance to the sick including home visits, support for families and orphans…
Should a pregnant mother ask for an HIV test we are able to offer her a series of free services with competence and continuity. CUAMM intends to base all its AIDS projects along this line because this is the only way to reach the people most in need and to obtain lasting results.

Dr. Leopoldo Salmaso, what is so special about the AIDS-Free Birth project?
AIDS not only threatens the lives of many millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa it is cancelling progress made with great difficulty in health care and development in recent decades and threatening the social and political stability of many countries.
AIDS-Free Birth consists in this: … Meeting the AIDS emergency with routine mobilisation– says Dr Leopoldo Salmaso, project co-ordinator. These are not only words. AIDS is an emergency but we strive to use ordinary means to address the situation including more than 400 local health care workers and volunteers all Tanzanians and strongly motivated since they realise they are in the front line to fight a war which involves their own families, friends, neighbours. They are aware that they are part of a church community animated by Christian charity.
«This is part of a journey started 24 years ago with the local community, its leaders, religious and civil, in fact–Salmaso explains – if I have any regrets is that today for a project like this we must rely on diocesan resources, private resources whereas 20 years collaboration with government institutions was predominant: this would not appear to be progress from the point of view of social and political self support of a country. Government/Church collaboration in Tanzania has always been excellent. Both sides have always been sincerely and concretely dedicated to the common good, but ten years ago the government had to bow to the liberal dictates of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank: cuts in education, health care social services to make space for private initiatives…clinics which only take credit cards. In this situation the only hope of poor people is the Church which strives to fill the void left by the government and the request is enormous.
Here in Dar es Salaam, about 800.000 persons, 60% Muslim rely on the local Catholic Church for health care at accessible costs and even free in the case of the very poor. There is a good home-care network and solidarity finds new paths every day as well as initiatives of self-help, chain-help, and mini-businesses. Of course robust outside support is still necessary especially for the families, and there are many, where AIDS killed one or both parents and it is necessary to help the orphaned children to continue with school to prevent a vicious circle of poverty, ignorance and marginalisation.
So our project is not out of the ordinary because outside help passes by local channels and criteria with transparency to support hospital care, school fees, vaccination, repairing a roof, a mini-loan for a small business run by women.
NSA project consists of treatment to prevent transmission of HIV virus mother/child in pregnancy and at birth or immediately afterwards. «This is the first time that we are able to offer a concrete, acceptable and sustainable means to stop the transmission of the HIV virus. And this reinforces all the other work we undertake in health care education for responsible behaviour, HIV testing for persons at risk, treating infections, economic, social and spiritual support to individuals and families». (AP) (3/4/2004 Agenzia Fides)