Church officials expected to attend HIV summit

MANILA, Philippines - Officials of the Catholic Church are expected to attend the first HIV Summit 2010 tomorrow, the Philippine National AIDS Council (PNAC) and the Department of Health (DOH) said yesterday.

PNAC Secretariat executive director Dr. Ferchito Avelino said they sent an invitation to the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) through its social action arm, the National Secretariat for Social Action-Justice and Peace (NASSA).

NASSA has confirmed it will attend the summit while PNAC has not received any reply from the CBCP.

“But the participation of NASSA is already the participation of the Catholic church. I think there will be representatives from the CBCP,” he said in a telephone interview.

The Catholic hierarchy has been strongly opposing the promotion of condoms in the Philippines, saying it encourages promiscuity.

The DOH is pushing condom use as one of three strategies to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus. The other strategies are abstinence from unsafe sex and being faithful to one’s partner.

According to Avelino, the summit was organized to rally support to campaigns against HIV/AIDS, which was observed to be rising at alarming rate in the last three years.

“As of (Saturday), a total of 333 individuals have already confirmed their attendance. They come from the local government units, national government, civil organizations, and concerned sectors. We hope to bring together people so that we can have concerted efforts against the virus,” he added.

PNAC and DOH are hopeful that after the summit, the country could draw up a response plan to curb the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has afflicted a total of 4,697 persons from January 1984 to February 2010.

The two agencies warned that the situation is alarming as the rate at which new cases are being reported has increased from one new case every three days in 2000 to one case per day in 2007 to two new cases per day in 2009.

In the last five years, health officials have also witnessed a demographic shift in the spread of the virus, with the men-having-sex-with-men sector now most at risk, no longer the commercial sex workers. MSM pertains not only to homosexuals but to straight men who engage in sexual practices with fellow men.

DOH records showed that for the month of February alone, there were 130 new HIV cases and this was 117 percent higher compared to the 47 cases registered during the same period in 2009.

Of the 4,697 HIV cases, a total of 835 have progressed into full-blown AIDS.