A group of Seventh-day Adventist physicians in South Africa are funding a video about AIDS, a project they hope will help bring local communities together in the fight against the disease. Sponsored by Adventist Professional Health Services, the video will take an in-depth look at issues such as the social implications of AIDS, mythology surrounding the disease, youth and AIDS, and current prevention and treatment methods.

“This is a significant production that attempts to take a comprehensive look at the AIDS pandemic from a distinctly Adventist perspective,” says Dr. Allan Handysides, health director for the Adventist world church. “The president of the Adventist Church in South Africa, V. Wakaba, first came up with the idea as a way of bringing people—no matter what their faith—into Adventist churches; to forge a sense of community and unity in confronting the many social, medical, and economic problems arising from the AIDS crisis in that country.”

Handysides, who is presenter for the video, traveled to South Africa last month, and says that first-hand encounters with communities decimated by AIDS were “eye-opening and heart-wrenching” experiences.

AIDS has devastated whole towns and communities, wiping out families and leaving hundreds of thousands of children without parents, says Handysides. “We visited one home where a 14-year-old is in charge of the family.” In a community near Maluti Adventist Hospital, in Lesotho, Mapoteng, there are more than 400 AIDS orphans in a community of only two to three thousand people.

Handysides spoke to an HIV-positive woman who said she is afraid to have her son undergo a test for the virus. “If he has it, he’ll die and I’ll be alone,” the woman told Handysides. “And even if he doesn’t have it, I know I’ll die anyway and he’ll be alone.”  “She is overwhelmed—paralyzed—by the situation,” says Handysides.

The HIV/AIDS video is intended to help spur a faith-based, community-wide response to the disease and its impact on society. Handysides and his team traveled to a new location to film each segment of the video. At every site, they involved the local community, meeting with town leaders and residents to explain the project, and inviting them to attend the evening’s taping.