By Priscilla Greear

ATLANTA— “AIDS—No Time to Spare” is the title of a report recently issued to President Bill Clinton by Lynne Cooper and others on a presidential advisory council. It is the message Cooper gives about the global spread of HIV/AIDS, the world’s worst epidemic since the bubonic plague of 1348.

Cooper, who grew up in Atlanta, currently runs Doorways, an interfaith AIDS housing program in St. Louis. She also traveled this year to Africa, the heart of the AIDS crisis, and to Atlanta to attend HIV/AIDS conferences. At the U.S. Conference on AIDS held Oct. 1-4 in Atlanta, Cooper carried with her, from the international conference in July, a sharper sense of the widening scope of the virus’ wrath in Africa and globally and the need for increased U.S. intervention.

The national conference sponsored by the National Minority AIDS Council attracted over 3,300 community-based workers, people with HIV, physicians, social and health department workers and others to learn, share and network. Cooper, a former Sister of St. Joseph who graduated from St. John the Evangelist School in Hapeville and St. Joseph’s High School in Atlanta, led a daylong institute on housing. She became Doorways president in 1996 after serving as executive director since 1989 and is on the board of the National AIDS Housing Coalition.

The event focused on HIV/AIDS in the United States. One concern was how to reduce the rate of the spread of HIV/AIDS among Latinos and African-Americans, who are increasingly disproportionately affected. Topics ranged from the innovative and successful role of black churches in helping to address HIV/AIDS issues to the lack of HIV/AIDS information in Spanish.

While people treated with new drug therapies in the United States are living longer, approximately 40,000 new HIV infections occur each year, a rate unchanged since 1992, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1999 blacks comprised 54 percent of new infections and Hispanics 19 percent. This occurred although blacks make up only 13 percent and Hispanics 12 percent of the population of the United States.

Cooper said that in St. Louis African-Americans, who make up 20 percent of the city’s population, represent 65 percent of new infections. The NMAC sponsorship gave her hope.

“They have been leaders in mobilizing and in empowering the minority communities to shed some of the denial” and deal with HIV/AIDS, she said. “One of the big challenges is to get minority leaders—people with resources—and the church community all headed in the same direction of care for people with HIV and AIDS, particularly to empower minority leaders to work within their own communities to prevent HIV and to care for people with HIV.”

National initiatives include the Congressional Black Caucus/Minority HIV/AIDS Initiative, which allocates money through the CDC to help minority agencies address AIDS issues. The CDC, which provides over $400 million to help communities build prevention programs, has increased HIV/AIDS prevention funding from 1988 to 1999 from $11 million to $140 million for African-Americans, and for Latinos from $7 million to $59 million.

“AIDS seems to be associated with poverty. Poor people have a greater likelihood of not receiving the prevention message and of having poor health care in general,” Cooper said. “There’s a tremendous amount of denial in all of our communities, particularly the minority communities. It’s hard enough to deal with discrimination. There’s a lot of denial of HIV and AIDS because it only adds to the burden the individual and community face.”

People who are seeking treatment are living longer through expensive new drug therapies. “Some drugs cost as much as $15,000 a year. That makes it an even greater challenge. A lot of people don’t have access to health care in general. AIDS only compounds the problem that we already deal with as a nation,” she said. “It’s a basic question as to whether you believe health care is a basic right.”

Cooper, who holds a doctorate in ministry from Eden Seminary in St. Louis, spoke at the conference on developing housing projects for people with HIV/AIDS. Many lose their jobs and health insurance, can’t afford housing or are discriminated against in the housing market, she said. Housing and other essentials like food and clean water are necessary for people with HIV/AIDS not only to survive, she noted, but also to follow strict, long-term regimens required for drug therapies. Helping people manage their illness in decent housing also reduces emergency room and hospital visits and thus cuts costs and benefits the whole community.

“Anybody who doesn’t have basic necessities ... is unable to comply with the drug regimen that is required to keep (the person) alive and healthy.”

On the global front, an inability for Africans with HIV to take new medications properly is an enormous barrier in that continent’s AIDS crisis. It was also one issue discussed among hundreds of presentations at the XIII annual international conference on HIV/AIDS in Durban, South Africa, “Breaking the Silence.” Cooper joined over 12,400 others July 9-14 to discuss a variety of concerns including medical care, research, prevention and international concern. While only 10 percent of the world’s population lives south of the Sahara in Africa, that region accounts for over two-thirds of the world’s over 34 million cases of HIV/AIDS. It is estimated that over 12 million children have been orphaned there as parents died from the illness.

Having gone to get a better sense of the virus’ global spread, Cooper, 49, came back overwhelmed by “how far reaching the poverty was, how devastating it had been to the population already and how ill-prepared many of the primitive countries were to deal with it.”

But she returned undaunted in her determination to fight it. Following the conferences, in October Cooper’s work took her to Washington, D.C., where since 1998 she has served with about 34 others on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. It was established in 1995 to advise and educate others on effective prevention and to promote research and needed services. They then presented a report to President Clinton recommending actions for his final months in office. Their task now is “holding our breath” to see who becomes the next president and what direction he’ll take. Cooper added that Clinton has been “very attentive to the issue” and under his administration funding for prevention, research, care and overseas aid has increased.

The report recommends supporting the highest possible funding for prevention, treatment, housing, research, substance abuse treatment, international programs and the Congressional Black Caucus initiative. Other advice includes providing significant debt relief to nations hardest hit, as some countries spend more on that than health care. It called on the president to urge religious leaders to discuss the epidemic openly and particularly to fight sexism, homophobia and racism, which contribute to high-risk behavior.

“It was a great honor,” Cooper said of serving on the council. “I had the opportunity ... to meet some of the most important people in the nation, in the world and to learn from them about our work and how to do a better job.”

Back in St. Louis, Cooper is busy opening new doorways to affordable housing and providing a better life for the infected, plus speaking on her Africa trip. Doorways assists over 320 persons with rent, mortgage and utility bills, operates four apartment buildings that house 100 people and assists another 36 persons in a residential care facility for persons with AIDS.

The Archdiocese of St. Louis is one of its biggest financial supporters, a tradition rooted in the leadership of the late Archbishop John May who supported Doorways’ establishment and told Catholics it was their responsibility to care for those who are sick “when a lot of (church) people didn’t want to do anything with AIDS.”

“When people wanted to discriminate or say AIDS is God’s punishment, he was somebody who would stand up and say the only appropriate faith response is care, not judgment,” she said.

For Cooper, AIDS ministry is right on target with Catholic social justice teaching as it serves those often afflicted not only by the virus but by homophobia, poverty and discrimination. And there are probably people secretly living with AIDS in every community. “It’s clearly an effort to care for the poorest of the poor,” she said. “It’s really consistent with church social justice teachings and the church being concerned for the poor—and especially right now when racial minorities and women and youth are those who are being disproportionately affected (as) these are people who already share a special burden of poverty and discrimination.”

She recommended churches interested in AIDS ministry invite speakers from various AIDS organizations to determine what route best fits the parish personality.

Cooper, who returns to Atlanta to visit four siblings here, is privileged in St. Louis to both build decent housing and God’s kingdom.

“I probably see more of God and spirituality on a day-to-day basis at work than I would in a more formal religious setting,” she said. “It’s sad, and there are really bad things that happen, but there’s an incredible amount of good. People who have HIV sometimes grow because of it ... There’s just a great return on the investing of time and energy.”

And as the Doorways president continues her work she’s staying in touch with and supporting a well-known AIDS activist in Zambia named Mwelwa. “If you look at only the big picture you wind up being paralyzed and do nothing with this situation. If I send him $100 that goes 20 times farther than it would in the U.S. He could do a whole lot of good with very minimal resources.”