HEALTH-MALAWI: Church Urged To Review Stance On Condoms

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Hazwell Kanjaye

LILONGWE, Jan 6 2000 (IPS) - With increasing number of people dying of HIV/AIDS in Malawi, religious groups have been urged to consider promoting condom use among faithfuls, as strongly advocated by government and civil society.

Over the years, religious groups in the small southern African nation, have consistently preached against the use of condoms as a means of combating the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, saying it promotes promiscuity and contravenes traditional values.

“The Church has problems with the dissemination of information on the use of condoms since the Bible says ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’. So what is the reason in publicising a thing that is encouraging immorality?” wonders Pastor Kenn Bilima of the Seventh- Day Adventist (SDA) Church.

Bilima, who is SDA’s education and communication director, recently told The Nation, a leading daily newspaper, that “the concept of talking freely about condoms was strange and not in keeping with Malawian culture”.

Sheik Mohammed Osman of the Moslem Association of Malawi, whose sect encourages polygamy, also argued in the same article that apart from promoting promiscuity, condom use contravenes the teachings of the Koran.

“We appreciate the catastrophe before us. But AIDS or no AIDS, it is difficult to change our stand,” a Presbyterian clergyman told IPS. He was referring to constant requests by the government and health organisations for the church to reconsider its stance on the epidemic.

Enraged deputy health minister Phillip Bwanali says “to assume that all those who use condoms are promiscuous is completely wrong”. The assumption, according to him, endorses the belief that all those infected with HIV/AIDS were promiscuous.

“The church is very influential and has a critical role to play particularly in remote areas where they are the main channel for information dissemination,” he says.

David Walker, Resident Director of Population Services International (PSI), the country’s largest distributor and promoter of condoms, has described the church’s belief that condoms are inconsistent with tradition and promote promiscuity as “incorrect, unproductive, misguided and dangerous in the light of the significant tragic toll that HIV/AIDS is having in Malawi”.

In a statement issued on Jan 5, Walker said there is no empirical or anectodal evidence, either in Malawi or elsewhere that supports the claim that condom promotion increases promiscuous behaviour.

While endorsing complete abstinence of sexual relations, and mutual faithfulness between partners, Walker says, globally, factors like traditional cultural practices, significant gender inequality and poverty make it difficult for many people, particularly poor females to consistently uphold such religious and moral ideals.

He calls for greater need to protect and preserve life. “Even (South Africa’s) Archbishop Desmond Tutu has advocated condom use for those who cannot always follow religious principles abstinence and mutual fidelity,” he says.

Malawi, with a population of 10 million, is one of the hardest hit by the epidemic. The Southern African country reported its first AIDS case in 1985. By the end of 1997 nearly one million had tested HIV-positive, a figure which will double by the year 2010, according to the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP).

NACP manager, Dr. Wilfred Chalamila-Nkhoma, says HIV infection is concentrated in younger age groups, particularly women. According to him, infection rate in young females aged 15-24 is about four to six times higher than infection rates in their male counterparts.

To date, with at least 14 percent of the population infected, and 25 percent of the urban workforce likely to die from HIV/AIDS in the next ten years, the epidemic is now the most critical challenge to the southern African country’s development efforts.

As of June 1999, more than 53,000 AIDS cases had been officially reported in Malawi. However, NACP estimates that the actual number of AIDS cases, since the start of the epidemic, has reached more than 265,000, most of whom have already died from opportunistic diseases like tuberculosis.

According to a new AIDS assessment study, conducted by the Malawi government and the World Bank, the most hit sectors include education and health, where the annual personnel death rate is now three percent, six times higher than the expected 0.5 percent.

The study says Malawi’s life expectancy, which was predicted to rise to 57 years in 2010, will now drop to 44. Current life expectancy is 43 years. It also says in the next ten years, 70,000 children will be orphaned annually by the epidemic while annual numbers of people with full-blown AIDS will reach 100,000.

“These are difficult times,” says Walker. “This is clearly not the time to argue over the morality of the few weapons we have at our disposal to combat HIV/AIDS.”

“We appreciate the teachings of the Bible and the Koran, but we cannot let people die in droves,” says Rodwell Gondwe, a resident of Lilongwe. “The condom should be widely distributed and promoted as indicated in the national strategy.”

Three months ago, Malawi launched a new strategy to galvanise and guide national action against HIV/AIDS for the next five years. The strategy, called Strategic Framework for the National Response to HIV/AIDS, is the country’s first comprehensive plan on mitigating the impact of the epidemic.

Apart from ending the ad hoc nature in which HIV/AIDS issues have been handled, the strategy, developed after a national consultative process, will help break the silence and stigma surrounding the epidemic by encouraging people to talk openly about it.

It also aims to promote the development and implementation of policies and legislation that will ensure that the epidemic attains priority in all arms of government, increase investment in programmes for young people, and make information, support and tools for prevention, including condoms, available to all citizens.