HIV testing part 1: AIDS orphans and *my* HIV status
I finished The Irresistible Revolution and moved on to J. Matthew Sleeth's Serve God, Save the Planet and Shayne Moore's Global Soccer Mom. I've only started reading books like this in the past year, as I've become more concerned about global health and the Church's responsibility to reach God's children on multiple levels. I highly recommend the three books this paragraph mentions - they are practical and motivating. So much so that yesterday I went for HIV testing.
Yep.
A friend I told texted back: "Ummmm, why?"
Honestly, I think that would have been my instinctive response too - until this year. But now there are 2 reasons I encourage everyone to be tested for HIV. This post is about the first reason. I'll post the second later.
My first reason for promoting HIV testing is to reduce the number of children orphaned by AIDS. Increasingly I find myself burdened for the HIV/AIDS community. Especially AIDS orphans. I've wanted to adopt since I was 10 years old, when I read a story about an orphan named Misha in Chicken Soup for the Soul. God has laid orphans on my heart increasingly since high school. And lately, AIDS orphans have been on my mind.
According to UNICEF, there were "132 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean in 2005" (UNICEF, 2011). In 2010, an estimated 16 million had lost their parents to AIDS (World AIDS Orphans Day, 2011). Unprotected, small, and generally sick or malnourished, these children are easy targets for exploitation through child labour, prostitution, and child soldiering. Those sound like abstract concepts and distant numbers. But the abstraction and distance is all in our heads. Remember the story of the Good Samaritan? Jesus concluded it by asking his Jewish audience, "Who was the man's neighbor?" Being a neighbor in the sense Jesus meant has nothing to do with separation by social status or kilometres-away. It has everything to do with my choice to let social status or kilometres-away separate me from a hurting human being. Seriously, how abstract would it be if that was my sister Ruthanna working her starved fingers off to make Disney T-shirts, my sister Sarah being sold daily to diseased older men, or my brother Josiah being forced to murder and rape our townspeople? My abstraction is a complacent choice born of convenience, privelege, and the spirit of self-justifying alienation that made Cain ask, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Oh yes. Oh yes I am.
So what do I do? My immediate change in mindset can't literally erase the miles between myself and Sudan overnight. It can't automatically make me a UN spokeswoman or fluent in Khmer. But it can start working on the distance.
If everyone knew their AIDS status, maybe we could slow the spread of AIDS. Maybe a few more people would choose to abstain, to use protection, to get treated, to formula-feed instead of breast-feed. If everyone knew their AIDS status, maybe the impact of AIDS on children could be buffered. Maybe some children wouldn't become orphans, or some parents could make arrangements so their children would be cared for when they weren't there to do so anymore. My mind says, "Honestly, in the face of a pandemic like this, what difference does a few people make?" And I look down at my hands, typing erratically as I try to think this out, and I realize that I'm alive because two people got married.
My community health professor reinforced the concept that all of us heard as children: the best form of protection is prevention. Yes, there are millions of kids out there that I believe God is gearing my life to serve, someday, somehow. In the meantime, I want to do everything I can to reduce the number of children becoming orphans worldwide. Starting in my immediate circle of acquaintance.
So yesterday I drove to a community outreach clinic in Southside Chicago and had my gums brushed with a plastic swab from the OraQuick 2 HIV testing package. Not because I think I have it. There are some things you have to do, that I have never done, in order to physically be at risk. (Although according to the Red Cross, living in Sub-Saharan Africa is enough of a risk factor for AIDS that I can never give blood.) But because if I do it, I can promote it firsthand to my friends. Which is - you guys. :) And then you can do it and promote it to yours. And maybe somewhere down the line someone who doesn't know they need to be tested will get tested, and they will have a chance to save lives with their own informed choices.
So seriously, y'all. Many community clinics offer free HIV testing. Know your status. And then encourage your friends to do it too.
Part 2 coming soon.
References:
World Aids Orphans Day. (2011). The facts. Retrieved from http://www.worldaidsorphans.org/section/the_orphans_crisis/the_facts
UNICEF. (2011). Press centre: Orphans. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/media/media_45279.html
Yep.
A friend I told texted back: "Ummmm, why?"
Honestly, I think that would have been my instinctive response too - until this year. But now there are 2 reasons I encourage everyone to be tested for HIV. This post is about the first reason. I'll post the second later.
My first reason for promoting HIV testing is to reduce the number of children orphaned by AIDS. Increasingly I find myself burdened for the HIV/AIDS community. Especially AIDS orphans. I've wanted to adopt since I was 10 years old, when I read a story about an orphan named Misha in Chicken Soup for the Soul. God has laid orphans on my heart increasingly since high school. And lately, AIDS orphans have been on my mind.
According to UNICEF, there were "132 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean in 2005" (UNICEF, 2011). In 2010, an estimated 16 million had lost their parents to AIDS (World AIDS Orphans Day, 2011). Unprotected, small, and generally sick or malnourished, these children are easy targets for exploitation through child labour, prostitution, and child soldiering. Those sound like abstract concepts and distant numbers. But the abstraction and distance is all in our heads. Remember the story of the Good Samaritan? Jesus concluded it by asking his Jewish audience, "Who was the man's neighbor?" Being a neighbor in the sense Jesus meant has nothing to do with separation by social status or kilometres-away. It has everything to do with my choice to let social status or kilometres-away separate me from a hurting human being. Seriously, how abstract would it be if that was my sister Ruthanna working her starved fingers off to make Disney T-shirts, my sister Sarah being sold daily to diseased older men, or my brother Josiah being forced to murder and rape our townspeople? My abstraction is a complacent choice born of convenience, privelege, and the spirit of self-justifying alienation that made Cain ask, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Oh yes. Oh yes I am.
So what do I do? My immediate change in mindset can't literally erase the miles between myself and Sudan overnight. It can't automatically make me a UN spokeswoman or fluent in Khmer. But it can start working on the distance.
If everyone knew their AIDS status, maybe we could slow the spread of AIDS. Maybe a few more people would choose to abstain, to use protection, to get treated, to formula-feed instead of breast-feed. If everyone knew their AIDS status, maybe the impact of AIDS on children could be buffered. Maybe some children wouldn't become orphans, or some parents could make arrangements so their children would be cared for when they weren't there to do so anymore. My mind says, "Honestly, in the face of a pandemic like this, what difference does a few people make?" And I look down at my hands, typing erratically as I try to think this out, and I realize that I'm alive because two people got married.
My community health professor reinforced the concept that all of us heard as children: the best form of protection is prevention. Yes, there are millions of kids out there that I believe God is gearing my life to serve, someday, somehow. In the meantime, I want to do everything I can to reduce the number of children becoming orphans worldwide. Starting in my immediate circle of acquaintance.
So yesterday I drove to a community outreach clinic in Southside Chicago and had my gums brushed with a plastic swab from the OraQuick 2 HIV testing package. Not because I think I have it. There are some things you have to do, that I have never done, in order to physically be at risk. (Although according to the Red Cross, living in Sub-Saharan Africa is enough of a risk factor for AIDS that I can never give blood.) But because if I do it, I can promote it firsthand to my friends. Which is - you guys. :) And then you can do it and promote it to yours. And maybe somewhere down the line someone who doesn't know they need to be tested will get tested, and they will have a chance to save lives with their own informed choices.
So seriously, y'all. Many community clinics offer free HIV testing. Know your status. And then encourage your friends to do it too.
Part 2 coming soon.
References:
World Aids Orphans Day. (2011). The facts. Retrieved from http://www.worldaidsorphans.org/section/the_orphans_crisis/the_facts
UNICEF. (2011). Press centre: Orphans. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/media/media_45279.html
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