May 25, 2009 / 18:10 pm
The Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of Congo has announced a plan to collect $144 million to be used by Caritas Congo for a three-year HIV and AIDS program. Many of the HIV sufferers are women who had been raped in “acts of war.”
Caritas reports that the funds will be used for education and prevention, treatment and care, and for work against the stigma attached to the disease.
There are about 450,000 people infected with HIV in the Congo, with as many as 50,000 of them being children.
In the east of the country about 1.5 million people have fled their homes because of conflict. This has left women and children vulnerable to rape and HIV infection. In 2006, as many as 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in South Kivu Province. About 10-12 percent of women who were raped are infected with HIV.