The Seventh-day Adventist Church in the west African nation of Cameroon is well-positioned to play an important role in responding to the country’s HIV/AIDS crisis, says Ambassador Jerome Mendouga, Cameroon’s ambassador to the United States.

“The best thing we can do is to concentrate on prevention,” said Mendouga at a May 15 reception at the Adventist Church world headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, United States.  “And prevention implies education about what HIV is, and how best to avoid it, as well as sensitivity to the people at risk.”

“Churches are at the grassroots of society and can do a lot,” he added.  “Surely, in a country such as ours, a word through churches has great impact.”

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is altering the landscape of Cameroonian society, reducing the available workforce, placing additional strain on the country’s already overburdened health care system and, each year, leaving thousands more children without parents. An estimated 270,000 children in Cameroon under age 15 have lost either their mother or both parents to AIDS, according to latest statistics from the World Health Organization. Almost eight percent of Cameroon’s population was living with HIV infection by the end of 1999, and some 340,000 people had already died of the disease.

At the reception, Ambassador Mendouga also praised the “real involvement of the Adventist Church in the development of our country” and he affirmed his government’s commitment to religious freedom. 

“There is an open society in Cameroon,” said Mendouga.“We believe that in a good society, each can worship according to their own beliefs.” Adherence to this principle, he explained, contributes to the internal peace and stability necessary for the economic and social development of a country.

The present-day nation of Cameroon dates from 1961, when former French and British sections of the country were united under one national government. There are some 90,000 Adventist Church members in Cameroon worshiping in more than 800 congregations.