Getting the message across

Souper Sunday aims to make a clear connection in the minds of church members between issues of HIV and food. In recent years, enormous steps have been taken to make antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) available to people living with HIV. These drugs effectively combat the advance of the virus within a person's system, so reducing the likelihood of AIDS developing. For this reason, ARVs provide genuine long term hope for those people who have been diagnosed HIV+.

ARVs, however, neither offer a cure nor in themselves give any guarantee of effectiveness. Rather, they can help sustain a person's quality of life only if they are taken in a responsible way. In particular, these medicines must be taken with food.

In the economically developed nations, where three meals a day are the accepted norm, ARVs stand an excellent chance of helping people overcome the threats posed by HIV. Yet in developing countries, where food deprivation poses a major risk to many families and individuals, people who cannot afford to eat properly are in real danger of finding their medication compromised and their health threatened.

That's where Souper Sunday comes in, helping us both to understand these issues and to do something about them. Read on for more details of what you can do in your congregation and presbytery.

The Church of Scotland HIV Programme
(Scottish Charity No SC011353)