Twenty students from Mission College in Thailand take an hour-long trip every other week to a Buddhist wat, or temple compound, in the town of Lopbury where they visit 50 to 75 AIDS patients at a hospice set up by monks.
Twenty students from Mission College in Thailand take an hour-long trip every other week to a Buddhist wat, or temple compound, in the town of Lopbury where they visit 50 to 75 AIDS patients at a hospice set up by monks.
Students talk with the patients, read, pray and sing with them. There is no active treatment at this facility. The patients won’t be there for long. No HAART—highly active anti-retroviral therapy. Only antibiotics are given along with other temporary relief. Four to five patients die each week and the facility has plans to build a third crematorium.
Southeast Asia has one of the world’s highest rates of AIDS infection, second only to Africa. But the full consequences of the epidemic have yet to hit. According to the World Health Organization, 1 in 5 people in the region are living with AIDS but death rates are only 1 in 11.
“In five years they’re going to see double the death rate,” says Dr. Allan Handysides, director of health ministries for the Seventh-day Adventist Church worldwide, who visited the region two weeks ago.
The estimated number of adults and children living with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is 25.3 million compared with 5.8 million in South and Southeast Asia. In 2000 there were 3.8 million new cases of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa versus 780,000 new cases in South and Southeast Asia. “That’s almost a quarter as many,” says Handysides. “Asia is catching up with Africa.”
The Buddhist monks have secured funds, mainly from international organizations, to keep the hospice running.
And for now the students from the Adventist college will keep visiting the patients. The singing, the praying, and the once every two-week interaction will continue. “The human contact is so important,” says Handysides. “This ministry is very simple.”
He says that many accept Christ and die shortly thereafter.
The monks, with shaved heads and dressed in their orange and brown robes, hold their bowls to receive alms and watch the Adventist students as they enter the temple complex. Handysides is pleased that young people are getting involved. “This is an example of how different groups come together for the benefit of these people.”
