All Clergy Should Undergo HIV Tests, Says UN Adviser

CHURCH LEADERS should con­sider being tested for HIV to help banish the stigma attached to testing, an expert at UNAIDS (the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS) has said in advance of World AIDS Day next Monday.

A Lambeth Palace spokeswoman, responding on Wednesday, said that African bishops had already had themselves tested as an example to others, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury believed that church leaders should take a lead in educat­ing people about the issues.

In part of a statement expected on Monday, Dr Williams will say: “Recognizing that people living with HIV is us not them, whether its leaders and congregations, congrega­tions and ‘outsiders’, it’s us. It’s all of our business . . . church leaders and church congregations taking responsi­­bilities for educating the wider public.”

Sally Smith, the Geneva-based UNAIDS partnership adviser who called for the testing, said: “This is an important way for religious and community leaders to break down the stigma often associated with HIV and testing.”

Everyone should know their HIV status, to make informed health decisions, she said in an interview published in full on the Church Times website today.

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United Nations Warns of New Food Crisis

Conservative Leader says that Food Security should rank alongside Energy Policy and National Security.

THE UN World Food Programme (WFP) is to hold an emergency meeting in Rome today, as rising food prices across the world threaten to create a new constituency of millions of city-dwellers who are unable to afford basic foodstuffs.

The Organization for Economic and Co-operative Development (OECD) has warned that food prices could rise by between one fifth and one half over the next ten years.

The sudden leap in the worldwide price of grain and other basic foodstuffs could mean that millions of hitherto relatively affluent people in cities would not be able to afford food, Greg Barrow, a London-based spokesman for the WFP, said on Tuesday.

He said the key factors behind the price-shift were:

• demand for meat from India and China, as their economies grow. Feeding livestock diverts grain stocks from markets;
• high oil prices, which have pushed up the costs of oil-based fertilizers and the cost of transport;
• arable land that has been switched to bio-fuel production, and so is lost for food supplies;
• weather extremes caused by global warming, which have damaged farming in the developed countries that supplied the global market.

Read the rest of Bill Bowder’s article here…