A Holy Ghost priest wants to set up an AIDS Partnership for Africain Ireland, to help in the 'unbearable challenge' of the deadly virus, Marie O'Halloran reports.
"Famine war, drought or revolution - AIDS is more than all of them. They will never touch society the same way that AIDS has," says Father Owen Lambert.
A priest with the Holy Ghost order, he has been a long-time resident of Ethiopia and has the stark statistics of the virus and its impact in Africa at his fingertips.
"There are up to 600 deaths a day in Ethiopia alone," he says. "Some 60 per cent of Ethiopian adults between 15 and 49 will be dead in 2015, according to a study by the renowned African Medical Institute and Jimma Health Centre."
Adulthood starts young in Africa and with a population of 60 million in Ethiopia and an average life expectancy of 49 years, the prospects are catastrophic.
When the Mengistu regime in Ethiopia was ousted, his army of between 400,000 soldiers was disbanded, with some 42 per cent of them HIV-positive. Across race and social class, the virus "is really hitting at the core of society, its leaders, its breadwinners".
Father Lambert, who divides his time between Ireland and east Africa, wants to establish an AIDS Partnership for Africa to help countries like Ethiopia "to deal with the huge levels of death and what will remain and to help people develop coping mechanisms".
He is a co-founder of the Irish NGO Self Help Development International, which was established to deal with Ethiopia's catastrophic famine of the early 1980s.
"As we did in 1984 with Self Help, an Irish group is needed specifically focusing on AIDS, to help Irish society and Europe, be more conscious of what is happening." He adds: "The whole of Europe has an opportunity. It is a responsibility we have to the other half of humanity."
"In the same way that Self Help evolved, it doesn't just deal with famine, it deals with its causes and helps people to help themselves. We want to set up a group to open the issue up to the public arena in Ireland."
He has no doubts about the Government's commitment to addressing the African epidemic. "Ireland Aid is very up front about the issue and build it into all their programmes. It is one of the best I've seen and other governments are beginning to adopt the Ireland Aid approach now."
The Holy Ghost priest facilitates existing efforts to deal with the crisis and starting new AIDS programmes. He is involved with the Italian agency CVM which has made significant progress in dealing with AIDS in the north-west of Ethiopia.
CVM, which receives substantial funding from a number of agencies including Ireland Aid, started in the city of Bahir Dar and now operates in a region covering 10 million people, including street children. There are already 5,000 street children in Bahir Dar with a population of about 100,000, and the number is steadily growing as their parents die from AIDS.
Emebete Eneyawis 10 years old. Her father died recently and her mother is still alive but very sick with AIDS and now blind. She has three younger siblings and is the sole earner.
Asked about her life on the streets she said "on a really good day we earn 10 birr (€1.27), an average day is six birr (€0.76) and a really bad day is (€0.25).
"When we have a good day and earn money we go home early. On a bad day, we stay late on the street and on our way home, men can catch us." She has been raped and her money taken by other street children and "old men, some with grey hair".
There is a phenomenon where older men rape virgins in the belief that it will cure them of AIDS.
Atetegeb Gashaw (10) looks after her three-year-old sister after both parents died from AIDS, and begs on the street. She too has been raped.
The Christian Orthodox and Islamic communities in Ethiopia have been instrumental in reducing the stigma of AIDS. They are encouraging tolerance and campaigning on the issue. Some 600 orthodox priests have been trained as counsellors and many will bathe and prepare a corpse for burial as part of the efforts to reduce fears.
Ireland's Chargé d'Affaires in Ethiopia, Ms Pauline Conway, points to a growing practice in Gurage, west of the capital Addis Ababa, one of Ireland Aid's programme areas. Often the men go to the city for work and when they return home months later, "a lot of women have insisted that their husbands be tested before being readmitted into the home".
It is a sign of progress.
"I would say that people are changing their behaviour," Father Lambert says, "but for too many it is now too late. Some of those in their early 20s will already be HIV-positive, but younger people are growing up with much stronger attitudes - having one partner and not multiple partners."
Father Lambertcan be contacted at (0508) 73120 or by e-mail on lamfam@eircom.net