Here is an article about Karuna's HIV programme.
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Myanmar Church Promotes AIDS Prevention
December 15, 2008
YANGON (UCAN) -- Bernadette Seng Bu knows about AIDS. It killed her elder brother and his wife, an elder sister and her husband, and a younger brother.
This is why she has vowed to try and spare others a similar fate.
"I decided to work in the field of HIV and AIDS because five of my family members died with the disease," the 38-year-old Catholic mother of three told UCA News. She lives in Lashio, a city 700 kilometers northeast of Yangon.
According to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, 240,000 people in Myanmar are living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which usually leads to AIDS.
Seng Bu, like many others, knows what can happen to people infected by the virus, typically transmitted via unprotected sex or used hypodermic needles.
Two years ago, she and four other women got together with help from Karuna (compassion) Myanmar Social Services (KMSS), the social-service organization of Myanmar's Catholic Church, to spread the message of prevention and to care for people with HIV and AIDS. Most villagers in their hilly region are ignorant about HIV and AIDS, Seng Bu told UCA News.
"Our group visits people in their homes to explain about care, counseling, and health education, and give medical and nutritional support," she said. "We still have stigma and discrimination (against people with AIDS) in our area."
Seng Bu spoke about this while attending a Dec. 5-7 workshop at the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Myanmar complex in Yangon. She was one of 20 caregivers -- 15 laypeople and five nuns -- who came for that program, one of several the Myanmar Church organized to mark World AIDS Day, observed worldwide on Dec. 1.
Like seven other Church-run caregiver groups in the country, Seng Bu and her companions try to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS. They explain how HIV is transmitted, discuss its dangers and advise couples to be faithful to each other to avoid infection. They also help the affected people visit a clinic or hospital. Karuna directly works with two of these groups, while Religious congregations run the rest.
At the Yangon workshop, the caregiver representatives presented ideas on how to get their own clergy more involved in AIDS prevention, awareness and care.
They also discussed networking among Catholics and people of other faiths, and how to overcome society's AIDS stigma and discrimination within the Church. One recommendation emerging from their discussion was that the Church set up hospices in Yangon and Mandalay for people living with AIDS.
Nuns are running day-care centers that provide counseling and medicine for people with AIDS, and make sure that patients who die get a suitable burial, but no other Church personnel operate comparable live-in facilities. The government runs hospices in Yangon.
About 200 priests, nuns and laypeople, including representatives of the Christian NGO World Vision, attended the Dec. 7 event, which included prayers and Bible sharing.
Three different family approaches to AIDS that San Win and his group depicted raised the question of what would happen to the children of parents who become infected with HIV and succumb to AIDS.
Like Seng Bu, San Win has seen AIDS up close. "My brother and a friend died of AIDS," he told UCA News during the event.
He recalled accompanying his brother to ask for medicine from international NGOs. After his brother died, he began working as a volunteer offering HIV and AIDS awareness programs to other people in Mandalay.
Archbishop Paul Zinghtung Grawng of Mandalay presided at the event and told participants every Catholic is obliged to spread awareness of HIV and AIDS.
http://www.theindiancatholic.com/report.asp?nid=11964
