Seventh-day Adventist Church administrators in Eastern Africa have voted to create an HIV/AIDS team to prepare teaching resources for pastors and other church leaders.

Dr. Fesaha Tsegaye, health ministries director for the region, said the team would “gather, prepare and distribute materials to be used in the HIV/AIDS education program activities in schools, institutions, and churches.”

The group will be known as the HIV/AIDS Information Education, Communication team and will be composed of personnel from the church’s health, family, youth, children, and women’s ministries departments.

The creation of the team comes in the wake of the latest release of alarming HIV/AIDS statistics. According to this year’s United Nations AIDS report on the global epidemic, about 3.5 million Africans were infected last year alone, while the number of adults and children living with the disease in sub-Saharan Africa rose to 28.5 million. The report also reveals that 2.2 million Africans died of AIDS last year.

The Adventist Church’s Eastern Africa region, or division, has its headquarters in Harare, Zimbabwe, and oversees church work in 10 southern and eastern African countries.