Vice Chair of CHAA, Rev Alan Bain is attending the XV111 World AIDS Conference in Vienna.

You can read his blog here.

Collision of Worlds at Vienna’s World AIDS Conference

As the imposing sound systems, lighting rigs and the 30 metre high AIDS banner transform Vienna’s Town Hall, preparation is made for the £1000 a ticket, “Life Ball” for AIDS causes. The air around the now fenced off gothic building is punctuated by loud music and a video message, graphically, but impossibly instructing, “Be safe or tie a knot in it”.

Vienna is not the best place to hold a conference on AIDS.  Named the city with the “world’s best quality of living for 2010”, by a leading global investment group, its traditions speak more of wealth and its misuse, than the  spawning grounds of poverty that the HIV virus virulently thrives upon elsewhere in the world. No doubt the “Life Ball” is a worthy event but it seems light years away from the grinding poverty many delegates at the XV111World Aids Conference have arrived from and will return to.

The location is probably why the cultural HIV programme of films and events in the city during this week of the World AIDS Conference seem to reflect European regret at losing famous filmmakers, artists and musicians more than those who suffer in poverty and an anonymous silence through HIV and AIDS.

But this contradiction over the pandemic underlines the schizophrenic attitude to the disease here in the West, where our loss of long dead pop stars and the almost glamorous dimension of AIDS now takes higher priority than 40 million infected people living with HIV throughout the world.

As a foil to this, the one day, faith based, pre – conference in Vienna organised by the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance addressed the issue “How do our faith traditions compel us to work towards universal access to HIV treatment care support and prevention” The answer was simply answered by Olar Fyske, General secretary of the World Council of Churches, when he said “ Is there anything that doesn’t compel us in our faith? We see God in the other and we must respond with care and solidarity”

How to address the needs of people living with HIV and AIDS was addressed through a group of  multi-faith speakers who’s message, though well meant and predictable, soon founded on the rocks of Bronx AIDS activist David Miller. 

David is a bulky, HIV+, ex - US Marine, in the terminal stage of the disease. Retorting angrily, that in all the talk of non - discrimination and stigma, most HIV+ people were excluded from the expensive, 250 strong conference, on economic grounds.

Why, said Mr Miller, “isn’t this conference talking about the real issues?  Why do we ignore censoring the twelve countries supporting heroin production in Afghanistan now flooding the streets of the Bronx and contributing to AIDS?”

“Why are we  not speaking about the impossible future level of  Anti RetroViral drugs required to combat the Pandemic? he claimed, echoing a recent UK Parliamentary report on the so called “AIDS Timebomb” awaiting the world as it works out how to provide ARV’s for a possible 50 million infected people in the next 20 years.

Like an Old Testament prophet, Mr Miller called the conference to examine the roots as well as the shoots of the Pandemic.

HIV positive, Prudence Kabale, from South Africa, also attacked one US conference speakers’ assertion that faith healers were “not needed in the fight against AIDS ”. She rounded, “ You can have all the medicines you want. HIV positive people need healing and medicine, and healing comes from faith.” Prudence movingly gave her own story of stigma and how her Christian faith helped her; “ I was told in 1993 never to step foot inside a church again because of my HIV+ status but it was the spark of faith that kept me alive  and helped me overcome the problems I faced.”

A member of the Jubilee Church in Scotland commented that “disposing of a God who heals is like disposing of God” while another, from Africa, pointed out that   without money, faith healers, rightly or wrongly, were often the only hope infected people have.

These interjections opened a moment of reality in an otherwise lack-lustre conference, revealing the clash of cultures ready to erupt below the surface, akin to the contradiction of holding the conference in the well-heeled University of Technology in Vienna. It became at times, provoking and prophetic.

One of the brighter spots of the conference was UNAIDS’s Deputy Executive Director Ms Jan Beagle who  cautioned for  faith groups to stay engaged. “ You are the advocates and practitioners. You have the networks on the ground and you can energise social movements.”

Ms Beagle spoke of UNAIDS new strategy, aiming for Zero new infections and AIDS deaths. She pointed out that HIV is a justice issue, which above all other pressing world problems, primarily affects the poor and powerless.

She said, “ With HIV the poor still die while the rich live. Global AIDS is at tipping point. Although we have seen a 17% drop in AIDS infections worldwide we still reach only a fraction of those infected. For every one treated a further 5 are infected and still, 5,500 people die of AIDS each day.” The real barriers, she said, are not technical or medical but political and cultural. “We need political courage to break the trajectory of AIDS.” she concluded.

The glitzy “Life Ball” held on Saturday night in the city with the best quality of life in the world, was packed with the rich and the powerful, arriving in black limos at the launch of the XV111 World AIDS Conference. Thousands of ordinary residents crowded around the high security fences for a free glimpse of the show and perhaps a sighting of a celebrity or two.

The scene  in Vienna is a good analogy of the AIDS crisis itself. As activists arrive from all corners of the globe, they look through Western fences, now deep in recession, for a glimpse of hope for the powerless.  It remains to be seen if the prophetic voice continues to emerge. Or, perhaps, it already has.

For more pictures from Vienna see here.

 Rev Alan Bain is the Vice Chair of the Christian HIV/AIDS Alliance a group of 18 major agencies and churches which aim to involve the UK church more in the global fight against HIV and AIDS. He is also the Vicar of St Philip and St James Church in Bath.