Some Observations and Practical Notes

Ago

All is calm and bright. But when faced with an epidemic outbreak, civil societies can rupture devastatingly. No one is well prepared, it can come so suddenly and be prolonged, repeatedly. Through the eight plagues that bore down upon Florence between 1340 and 1427, the city’s population shrank to one quarter of it’s former seize, and those who remained huddled together in an oversized and empty urban shell.¹ In the period when it stalked the Continent, from the sixth century to the eighteenth, plague was the deadliest disease Europe knew. The only effective way to avoid this hasty, painful and ugly death was to flee before the onslaught .((Katherine Park,
“Black Death,” in The Cambridge World History of Human Disease, ed. Kenneht F. Kiple
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)))

Such devastation calls for answers in the midst of anguish and terror. The concept of sin and that the disease was a punishment from God was inescapable. This association found some of its most striking and eloquent expression in the sermons and pamphlets of seventeenth-century English Protestants, such as the one that described plague as “a broom in the hands of the Almighty, with which he sweepeth the most nasty and uncomely corners of the universe.”²

The rhetoric of sin and blame inevitably gained momentum, given the religious moral climate of the day. Contributing to the sin syndrome, was the increasing presence of, and a corresponding revulsion for, the poor- the most common victims of the disease; all these together made it easy to view the devastating waves of plague not as strictly natural phenomena, but as supernatural punishments visited upon those people viewed as sinful in the eyes of God.³

Below is a Table of Selected Pandemics in Human History

 
Presently

The bubonic plagues were not associated with sexual sins. And yet one can imagine the compounding multiple religious and civil reactions to an epidemic that does involve sexual behaviour, especially ‘sinful’ sexual intercourse. Thus, enter AIDS, Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome. When this disease first surfaced in San Francisco in the early 1980s, it was among the homosexual men. It was later discovered that it was the Human Immunodeficiency Virus ( HIV ) that causes the human immune system to break down. HIV was found to readily transmit through unprotected sexual intercourse, intra-venous use of contaminated needles and syringes, infected blood transfusion, and mothers may pass it to their children at childbirth or through breastfeeding.

According to UNAIDS, at the end of 2007, there were 33.2 million people living with HIV, in the world. A total of 2.5 million people, including 420,000 children under 15 years were newly infected in that year and 2.1 million died of AIDS. It is estimated that more than 22 million people have died of AIDS related causes on this planet thus far. The majority of adults and children living with HIV are in the poorest countries of Sub-Saharan Africa ( 22.5 million ) , and the impoverished areas of South and South-East Asia ( 4 million ).

While there is yet to be a cure for AIDS, there are multiple antiretroviral drugs that can suppress but cannot eradicate the HIV from potentially destroying the body’s defence system. Finding a cure or vaccine seems many years away, since the HIV is able to mutate itself beyond the reach of the scientists. TB has taken advantage of the low immune system of PLWHAs, resulting in a strong resurgence in many African countries. There are also new strains of TB bacteria ( MDR_TB ) that are resistant to drugs, thus adding to toll of the pandemic. TB kills about 2 million people annually, mostly in poorer countries in the majority world.

There lies the very real problem of poverty, which links to the pandemics like AIDS, TB, Malaria and Sleeping Sickness. Drug companies demand a lot of money for the effective antiretroviral drugs, yet prevent competitors from marketing generic alternatives which cost much less.⁴) It is pretty clear now that AIDS is more than just a disease for the medical profession to battle or the public health to solve; but also a social issue that calls for justice, a religious dilemma to be redeemed, and much political will to do what is right and humane.⁵)

The key to preventing the HIV from spreading lies in human behaviour or rather ‘behaviour transformation’. Given the methods of transmission of the virus; abstinence, mutual monogamy, using condoms during sexual intercourse, avoiding untested blood transfusion, using clean needles and syringes, HIV testing, will suffice to help impede the pandemic. But a recent study has found that ninety percent of HIV people today do not know that they are HIV carriers. So, easier and more assessable HIV tests must be made available, in order to be able to help those who are found to be positive, earlier.

The challenges are immense and painstaking, yet there are cases where there signs of turning the tide of this growing pandemic in countries like Thailand, Uganda and Brazil. These have been possible because of vigorous and aggressive public health measures, political will, religious pragmatism and harm reduction methodologies. Sadly, the reality is that HIV is increasing in many countries especially amongst the poor and marginalised.

The language and tactics we use must transcend the mundane, familiar, even though increasingly unstoppable statistics of those infected by HIV and dying of AIDS, including the millions of children, and even more millions of wives who were infected by being faithful to their husbands. It is imperative that we shout loudly and express bodily the concepts of social justice, human rights, religious mercy and compassion.

As the Prophets exclaimed,

Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.
Isaiah 1:16,17

But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never ending stream!
Amos 5:24

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8

Previously In The Series
» A Theological & Practical Response To “World Pandemics” (Part 1)

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1. Ann G. Carmichael,
   “Plague and the Poor in Renaissance Florence”
   (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) 60. [↩]
2. Paul Slack,
   “The Impact of Plague on Tudor and Stuart England”
   (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), 59 [↩]
3. Peter L. Allen,
   “The Wages of Sin”
   (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 62 [↩]
4. Anne-Christine D’Adesky,
   “Moving Mountains”
   (London: Verso, 2004 [↩]
5. Paul Farmer,
   “Pathologies of Power”
   (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005 [↩]