Twenty years later, AIDS battle in Africa turns toward the spiritual

MBARARA, Uganda (BP)—The emaciated woman lies on a wafer-thin foam mattress, jammed in the corner. Her only pillow is a pile of rags stuffed under her head.

As visitors enter the room, her sister gently covers the woman’s shrunken ankles. The woman reaches her toothpick-like arms out in greeting, then brushes away the flies swarming around her mouth. She cannot lie still—even morphine cannot dull her pain.

The volunteer missionary says a quick prayer under her breath, asking God to ease the pain. This isn’t the first time she has seen someone in the last stages of HIV/AIDS. Although it’s been nearly 20 years since the missionary and her husband saw their first case, not much has changed on the surface. People are still dying—and no one mentions the cause of death.

Rick and Susan Goodgame served as International Mission Board missionaries in Uganda during the 1980s—when HIV/AIDS first appeared. The missionary doctor was among the first to study the mysterious disease from an African clinic. Recently the Texas couple jumped at an opportunity to return to Uganda for six months, filling in for a missionary physician and his family who were going on stateside assignment.

“I remember when we first started seeing this new disease around 1981. It involved profound diarrhea, weight loss and a skin rash,” Rick Goodgame recalls. “I presented a series of these cases at a conference and asked what it was. People concluded it was severe tuberculosis, pancreatic insufficiency, cancer and malaria.”

By 1982, Rick became suspicious that this strange disease might be the same AIDS talked about in San Francisco and New York.

“The ‘gay’ thing threw us off until some cases were confirmed in Haiti,” he says. “By 1984, we knew what we were dealing with.”

In the ’80s no one talked about AIDS or even knew how it was contracted, the Goodgames say. Most thought it was a curse and the best way to combat it was through a variety of cures offered by witch doctors. “Now, the stigma of HIV is not as bad, but it’s still there and oppressive,” he says. “When we started our Bible-based AIDS education effort years ago, there was a lot of ignorance. Now, education has maxed out—people know how HIV is spread and how to prevent it—yet it keeps spreading.

“It’s now a spiritual battle: How can I control my sexual behavior?”

The Baptist missionary doctors approach HIV/AIDS with a holistic view, Susan explained. The treatment at the clinic ministers to physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs. After patients are seen by the doctors, most are visited in their homes by a team of counselors. These counselors help tell other family members about the test results and answer questions related to living with HIV. They also present the Gospel and pray for patients.

For information, go to http://www.imb.org and search for AIDS.