全球智库信息集成服务系统

Key Findings

1. Many faith-based organizations (FBOs) in Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras already engage in some activities related to HIV prevention and care.
2. Barriers to FBO involvement include judgmental attitudes on the part of some FBOs toward gays, men who have sex with men, and commercial sex workers; lack of coordination among faith groups; limited resources; and differences in values between religious and health leaders.
3. FBOs might expand their efforts in several areas: care and support for people living with HIV (e.g., nutrition or income-generation activities), stigma reduction, advocacy, and HIV prevention and testing (in partnership with public health providers).

HIV/AIDS in Latin America has been called “the overlooked epidemic” because it has been overshadowed by epidemics of larger scale and severity in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Although AIDS accounts for a relatively small fraction of all adult deaths in most Latin American countries, the economic effects can be large because AIDS tends to strike adults in the most productive years of life. Addressing HIV in Latin America has thus been described as an opportunity to prevent epidemics as devastating as those of sub-Saharan Africa and to apply lessons learned from Africa and Asia. However, to date, government efforts to address the epidemic have fallen short of the levels needed to provide effective prevention and widespread access to treatment.