Religious Leaders Take Active Role in Raising HIV/AIDS Awareness

This article reports on a workshop attended by Muslim and Christian leaders in Damascus,
Syria, in August 2005.
The Religious Leaders Sub-Regional Training Workshop was organised by the United Nations
HIV/AIDS Regional Programme in the Arab States (HARPAS), and "was designed to clarify facts about the disease and train religious leaders in
how to use an HIV/AIDS manual drafted by participants at the Cairo conference in
December 2004." The programme, according to this article, is part of an effort to
reverse the current 300 percent a year increase in HIV infections in the region.


One workshop attendee is quoted as explaining that the participation of the
religious leaders is "essential in combating the epidemic because of people's strong confidence in
religious leaders". In Syria, for example, more than 60% of Muslims attend
Friday prayers, according to this article.



While the focus was on use of Friday sermons to spread information, a variety of
communication methods are being used. One Palestinian participant
is quoted as saying that "Following the Cairo Declaration, we started to raise the awareness of people in
mosques through Friday sermons, seminars, religion classes and the mass media."

This was the second in a series of regional workshops organised, this article states, at the request of religious leaders
who had attended the Cairo conference. At an earlier workshop in Cairo "more than 80 prominent religious leaders from the Arab region pledged to face
the imminent danger of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and promote virtue and religious
values in trying to control its spread, by signing the Cairo Declaration."