Caritas’ response to the HIV epidemics is measured, not only in realizing expected outcomes, but also by the greater enjoyment of human dignity among persons living with or affected by HIV.
In partnership with the Red Cross, Caritas Internationalis and other faith based organisation, the World Health Organisation has updated step-by-step processes for safe and dignified burials in the wake of the Ebola epidemic.
Greeting friends without hugging, waiting for relatives to emerge from quarantine, calling an ambulance that doesn’t arrive—this is what daily life in Sierra Leone looks like as Ebola ravages the West African country.
The World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) has announced a donation of $600,000 to support Ebola care and prevention efforts being carried out in West Africa by Caritas and the IFRC.
Caritas Internationalis health expert Monsignor Robert J. Vitillo is in Monrovia in Liberia, helping the local Church in its Ebola response. He finds a country and a people transformed by the killer virus.
As Ebola spreads through West Africa, even healthy people are suffering from the disease’s economic fallout. Markets are sometimes closed and travel is restricted.
Using the expertise gained through years of tackling HIV, Caritas and Catholic Church staff are combating Ebola as the deadly virus spreads in Africa.
Caritas on the front lines of Africa’s Ebola crisis. Caritas reaches out to people who are particularly at risk: “restaurant workers, taxi drivers, hotel staff, markets, places where people gather,” said Edward John-Bull of Caritas Sierra Leone.
New technologies offer hope to sick people living in poverty. At an AIDS conference in Melbourne, Australia, four scientists associated with Catholic institutions discussed ways to measure HIV infections and treat them.
UNAIDS is moving from a strategy of ‘zero new infections, zero AIDS-related deaths, zero discrimination’ to one where 9 out of ten people who are living with HIV know their status, receive therapy and that the virus is surpressed in their bodies.