Pinoy missionary preaches condom use in Cambodia

By David Dizon, abs-cbnNEWS


CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Filipino lay worker Arturo Ang has a mission in Cambodia - to help impoverished HIV sufferers in the country rebuild their lives as they suffer the ravages of the deadly disease.

To do that, Ang has resorted to both conventional and unconventional means. His program, Bridges of Hope, teaches HIV sufferers all about the usual modes of transmission of HIV and how to prevent it such as abstinence and being faithful to one partner.

He also teaches Cambodians to use condoms, a practice which may seem taboo to Catholic lay missionaries.

"The stand of our organization, of Maryknoll, which is a Catholic organization, is that we don't distribute condoms but our NGO gives education to people so we teach people about condoms for safe sex. Our program does have an element of family planning but it's more about positive prevention. We teach the ABCs of safe sex, which are abstinence, be faithful and condoms," he told abs-cbnNEWS.com

"We don't deny the people information about artificial family planning. We tell them where to get it and we teach them why it is important," he added.

The Philippine Catholic Lay Mission (PCLM) is a lay mission recognized by the Catholic Bishop Conference of the Philippines'. It was founded by the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers in 1977, an American missionary group in the United States.

PCLM traces its beginnings to the Maryknoll’s missionary charism and the growth of small Christian communities in the then Prelature of Tagum in Davao in the 1960s. The Maryknoll evolved a program for small Christian communities in the Tagum prelature, and as the communities matured, it became a natural consequence for them to become missionary by helping neighboring villages, parishes and dioceses form small Christian communities.

Ang, a native of Davao City, said the primary goal of the PCLM is to recruit, train and send missionaries to establish small Christian communities. After serving in the PCLM for several years in Davao, the Maryknoll order invited him and two others to go to Cambodia where the need for mission work was great.

Ang and two other lay missionaries arrived in Cambodia in late 2003 and immediately started work on helping HIV sufferers in the country. At the time, Cambodia had the highest HIV prevalence in Southeast Asia. The mode of transmission was usually through heterosexual transmission mostly through sex workers and husbands passing it on to their wives.

He said many of the HIV sufferers they helped during the early days of the Bridges of Hope project in Phnom Penh were sex workers and widows.

"Because of ignorance, a lot of these AIDS sufferers go to Phnom Penh to seek treatment. They sell their property to seek treatment. Maryknoll gives them care, we visit them in their homes and we also have a halfway house where they could stay and get food," he said.

He said the Cambodian government started giving anti-retroviral drugs to HIV patients in 2002. This led to a lot of formerly sick HIV patients finally getting well enough to work but not having jobs.

Ang said more than 500 HIV sufferers have "graduated" from the Bridges of Hope program since it launched more than five years ago. All of the graduates are Buddhists.

"Cambodia is a Buddhist country. The way of doing mission work in Cambodia is by helping the poorest of the poor and uplifting the dignity of the human being. We don't preach or proselytize. We only want to help them and uplift their status. Once they start earning an income, they are no longer in the program because they have the ability to take care of themselves and we can accept more people. All of them are Buddhists and we do not convert them," he said.

Ang said he finds satisfaction in the knowledge that they are finally changing the HIV situation in Cambodia.

"When I first arrived, people with HIV were just dying in the hospitals, mostly due to infections and other AIDS-related illnesses. There were no medicines. Now they still die because of illnesses but in a sense, it is getting better. They live longer because the Cambodian government did a good job rolling out ART for HIV patients. Unfortunately these people are still poor so the socioeconomic aspect of the illness still needs work," he said.

He also denies that teaching contraceptive use is a betrayal of Catholic teaching.

"Personally for me it is not a betrayal of my religion. People are dying so how do you protect them? Of course we teach them to abstain or be faithful but if you have a husband who is already infected and the wife is not infected, how can they have sex if they don't have protection? You cannot risk infecting your spouse with HIV just because the Church doesn't allow condoms," he said.

Instead of dictating what people should or should not do, Ang said people should be given all the information they need and let them decide their conscience.

He also said the Philippines should be more pro-active in curbing HIV despite the low HIV prevalence in the country.

"Remember, Filipinos are going out of the country and we also have a problem with prostitution. It's possible that there are still many people in the country who are HIV positive who don't know it yet because they haven't been tested. We need to be more proactive and do more on HIV testing and prevention," he said.