Cnbb Partners Up With Health Ministry To Encourage Hiv Testing

CNBB partners up with Health Ministry to encourage HIV testing Brazil’s National Bishop’s Conference (CNBB) announced on Thursday an unusual partnership with the country’s Health Ministry: an awareness campaign for HIV testing. With the slogan ‘Declare your Love to Yourself’, organizers will distribute pamphlets in Catholic Churches and dioceses as well as community centers and health clinics. The government hopes that the influence of the Catholic Church in the community will increase awareness of the importance of HIV testing for the general population and syphilis tests among pregnant women. The campaign will begin as an experiment in six capitals: Manaus, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Porto Alegre, João Pessoa and Rio de Janeiro. According to the CNBB what made this partnership possible was the concern, by both the Church and the government, over the health of the population. Bishop Eugene Rixen, president of the AIDS/STD Pastoral, said that the partnership will allow the government to reach those it would normally not have access to. ‘We reach the sub-world of the poorest and excluded,’ he said. As for the obvious divergences between the Church and the Brazilian government on issue of contraceptives, Friar José Bernardi, OFM Cap, executive secretary for the Pastoral, said that the focus of the campaign is not to promote an ideology, but to look for points in common between the Church and the government. According to Friar Bernardi more than 350 thousand agents from the Children, Health and AIDS/STD Pastorals will working in the campaign. Data from the Ministry of Health estimates that nearly 630 thousand persons are HIV positive in Brazil, and of those 225 thousand do not know of their conditions. The Ministry also revealed that in the case of pregnant women with syphilis 40% of the cases where there is transmission of the virus from the mother to the baby miscarriages and stillborn deliveries occur.