According to a 2008 report by UN agencies UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation, an estimated 1.9 million people were newly infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in 2007, bringing the number of people living with HIV in the region to 22 million.
More than two-thirds of the global total of 32.9 million people with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa. Seventy-five percent of the 2 million HIV-related deaths in 2007 occurred in the region.
Yet on Pope Benedict XVI's first official trip to Africa on March 17, he declared that the HIV/AIDS epidemic "cannot be overcome by money alone … cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems".
The president of the World Health Assembly and Guyana's health minister, Leslie Ramsammy, was among those to condemn the pope's comments: "The statement by the pope is inconsistent with science, it's inconsistent with our experiences and it is not in sync with what Catholics have experienced and believe", he said on March 21 according to AFP.
The March 27 British Guardian reported that prestigious medical journal the Lancet said "whether the pope's error was due to ignorance or a deliberate attempt to manipulate science to support Catholic ideology is unclear". The Lancet called on the Vatican to retract the statements.
The UN estimates that, without new initiatives that give greater access to drugs, more than 80 million Africans may die from AIDS by 2025. HIV infections could reach 90 million — or 10% of the continent's population.
The fact is, while the Vatican is at liberty to discriminate and sow confusion and prejudice, AIDS is deadly serious. It doesn't distinguish between men, women, gay, lesbian or straight, Western or African.
Resistance demands free and equal access to both contraception and anti-retroviral drugs. Such access is a human right.
The only way to eradicate HIV/AIDS is through secular, well-funded health and education programs centred on sexual health for all people.