"We Need More Champions"

If you read one thing about a global health epidemic this week, this article should be it. AIDS stories do not generally end on an uplifting note (notable exceptions being And The Band Played On and Angels in America, but they were about homophobia, too, which does have a cure).

However, it is when success is least likely that the capacity for heroism is at its most expansive. Gideon Byamugisha is an HIV-positive Anglican minister living in Uganda, challenging both the stereotypes surrounding AIDS and my own definition of "champion."

Byamugisha, 47, was Africa's first openly HIV-positive cleric, going public in the mid-1990s. Now he is part of a small but growing network of infected religious leaders on the continent who are putting their lives, careers and sometimes their faith on the line by speaking out about their experience with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. In doing so, they hope to bust stereotypes about the disease and who can contract it...

AIDS patients who dare to disclose their status are routinely fired from jobs, abandoned by friends and family, driven out of villages and at times even killed.

In Kenya this month, a 15-year-old HIV-positive boy, whose parents and grandparents died of AIDS, was hacked to death by his only surviving relative, who had forced the boy to live in a chicken coop. In 1998, South African AIDS activist Gugu Dlamini was stoned to death by neighbors...

Religious institutions remain one of the biggest obstacles to encouraging safe-sex practices. Many churches in Africa, including the Roman Catholic Church, still condemn the use of condoms, even to prevent HIV infection. Only recently have Anglican leaders eased their stance on condoms.

Only a few public figures in Africa have publicly acknowledged having the disease. A Ugandan singer disclosed his illness shortly before his death in 1985. Nelson Mandela announced that his son had been HIV-positive — but only after the son died...

"We need more champions," said Warren Buckingham III, who runs the U.S. government's effort to fund AIDS programs in Kenya.

"That's why what [Byamugisha and others] are doing is so important," he said. "They speak a moral language. When a religious leader talks about being HIV-positive, myths about immunity get punctured."