Rev. Michael Kelly
Barbara Ellington, Senior Gleaner Writer
AT AGE 75, retired university professor and Jesuit priest, Rev. Michael J. Kelly, has led a life dedicated to the service of others. His outstanding work, advocacy publications and education initiatives in the fight against HIV/AIDS have earned him kudos worldwide. Rev. Kelly spoke with Outlook when he visited Jamaica last week to receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the University of the West Indies.
BE: I read where President Kenneth Kaunda's son died of AIDS and the president shared that information with the country. Did he go public before or after his son's death?
MK: After the death but that was in 1987-9 and he died in Canada, only about seven years after the disease became known to the world; not many were going public. For a person of that stature, it was a gigantic step.
BE: Did you have personal contact with the president?
MK: Not at that time and I was out of the country, but I knew President Kaunda as a family man rather than as the president previously because I taught three of his sons in school.
I also had contact with one of my sixth form students at the school where I was head. After leaving school, she became a sales woman in an agriculture stores. She eventually died of AIDS. She used to lived with her father, and I began to get messages that people had this strange illness that no one knew about. She tried several doctors, herbal remedies; you could see the tremendous pain she endured, the excessive diarrhoea, the wasting away. Her father was distressed.
BE: In your experience in Zambia, is AIDS transmitted primarily through sexual contact or through intravenous drug use?
MK: I would say about 95 per cent sexual contact and it is largely transmitted mother to child because up to a few years ago, drugs were not available to prevent mother to child transmission. They are available now but some mothers don't want to go on the regime.
One of the reasons is that they want continue breast-feeding; if they don't they are criticised by older women in the community, who say "you're not behaving as a mother." They know now that if they're nor breast-feeding its because they have HIV and the finger is pointed. So there is a mixture of culture and stigma involved.
However, when a person falls ill and needs help, everybody forgets the stigma and rushes to help. There's no rejecting of people from their families because of AIDS. It's a contradiction, there may be a judgemental aspect for having HIV but once you're in need you will be helped.
Maybe one of the most encouraging things about this disease is many ordinary people rally to help one another. Between 75-80 per cent of the people of Zimbabwe live on less than one United States dollar a day. They are desperately poor. But there is the beautiful thing of the poor helping the destitute especially in home-based care, ensuring they have food and collecting their medicine at the clinic.
BE: What's the other end of the economic spectrum in Zambia; what percentage is considered extremely rich/wealthy?
MK: Probably about five per cent could be considered very wealthy and the other 15 or so in between.
BE: What's Zambia rich in?
MK: Pure copper, and metals but it's terribly dependent on it, the world market is volatile, prices unstable accounts for 75 per cent of foreign exchange, its major source of income comes from the one commodity; there is extensive farm land but farming is only now developing in recent years because agricultural polices were not adequate to promote it. In the last 15 years there has been extensive rose growing which provides employment.
BE: You think that as head of the United Nations, Kofi Anan has been doing enough in the fight against AIDS?
MK: He is doing a splendid job but if the others would only follow. I am not sure that the world has the right values in this regard. In 2003 world spending on HIV was just over US$4.7 billion against US$956 billion on war. US$2.7 billion a day on destroying lives and US$4.7 billion a year on preserving life. I think there is something radically wrong with that.
BE: This is sad
MK: It's obscene.
BE: But I keep hearing that many organisations are awash with funds for AIDS-related research and projects, where is that money coming from?
MK: From the same 4.7 billion-plus some philanthropic sources like Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the global fund and some from the European Union and DIFID and other agencies. Contributions will run up to $5 billion next year but currently we are under that.
But we have to recognise that there is a problem with spending the money in many countries even here in Jamaica earmarked for HIV/AIDS because of the need to build capacity. That's one of the things I've been talking about on this trip how to build capacity for the education sector to make a better impact; that is going to require better spending of the funds.
BE: What about your HIV/AIDS work in other African countries. On a recent trip to Zimbabwe I learnt some startling statistics, one in every four persons has the virus.
MK: Yes and it's even worse in neighbouring Botswana and Swaziland. I have been to Zimbabwe but not specifically dealing with AIDS as a national issue. I have also worked in other countries but what I would personally do about the problem is get the local people in the education sector, NGOs, universities, technical institutions and theological colleges, all of them alert them and raise their level of awareness in a conscientisation process, recognising that here is something that is massive, but which should not be, and we can get to grips with it through education. That's the first step to the problem.
The second thing is to participate in actual training of ministry of education personnel.
Thirdly, working with universities, so they will take it on board. I believe that some of the most vulnerable are in this age group, they are at the highest risk and becoming infected at the rate of four or five every minute daily.
BE: But how do you reach people who ought to know better but are at the reckless stage of life when they tell themselves, "it cannot happen to me;" and in the commercial sex worker and pornography industries where safe sex is still not a priority, how do you reach them?
MK: Thailand did it, they had an epidemic that was growing rapidly at the start of the '90s and they recognised it was in these seamy areas that it was developing, they had a thriving tourist sex trade and they took the radical decision of legislation requiring condom use in activities involving the use of brothels. They could be raided and closed if they were not complying, but if employees could produce certificates showing they were HIV/STD free, they were left alone. Thailand held the disease from expanding.
There were strong education campaigns in the schools, military but because of the collapse in the economy a few years ago, they had less money to put in the programme so it began rising again. However, they still maintain a strong education campaign.
BE: What would you consider an effective education campaign, what would be the message since it makes no sense simply telling people "you are going to die if you don't practise safe sex."
MK: The most important message is to stay in school as long as possible. In Zimbabwe it was found that girls in school were six times less likely to get infected; the schools keep them occupied.
Secondly, the girls may be having sex with their age own mates who are not yet infected; the real risk is when young girls have sex with older men who have played the field, these girls who then have sex with their age mates infect them, and the cycle continues.
There are cultural practices which contribute across the continent, but the bigger problem is the age mixing, the average African girl has a partner six years older, but a large number of them go for the 'Three Cs' 'sugar daddies' a cell phone, a cheque book and a car; we have 'sugar mommies' too. We are paying so much attention to sexual transmission that we are neglecting the underlying things that drive people in that direction. The disease won't spread unless it has a suitable environment and that is one of poverty; women not having the same powers of negotiation that men have.
There is an NGO programme called 'Bedroom Management', in which women are taught to negotiate before sex.
At the Mona campus women say, we are becoming powerful economically, we are surpassing them educationally but the moment we go into that bedroom he's in charge.
That is a submission to male domination and both women and men are to blame. Men don't recognise women's equal status, they see them as subordinates and women regard them as superior beings.
