OAKLAND, Calif. (ABP) — Four American Baptist mission volunteers were released Sept. 13 on $200 worth of bond after spending three nights in jail on suspicion of dispensing AIDS medication without a license in Zimbabwe.
The health workers — a doctor, two nurses and a community volunteer — are part of a high-profile AIDS ministry sponsored by Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, Calif. The group sends teams to Zimbabwe several times a year to give free antiretroviral drugs to AIDS orphans and HIV-positive people at two clinics, located in Mutoko and Harare.
An announcement on the Allen Temple website said church members are praying for their safe return.
Ministers from the prominent historically African-American church initially told media the arrests were the result of some kind of miscommunication, but later said attorneys had advised them not to comment or speculate about the case.
The Zimbabwean, a United Kingdom-based newspaper written for Zimbabweans in exile, said the lawyer representing the four Americans blamed rivalry between two African charities fueled by a misunderstanding that prompted the team to stop working at the Centre for AIDS Services in Harare. The center's executive director vehemently denied any involvement in the arrests.
The volunteers, who were working with two licensed Zimbabwean doctors who were also arrested, deny doing anything wrong. They say it is the first time they have gotten in trouble in 10 years of work in Zimbabwe, where political instability has crippled the government's heath system, leaving international and non-governmental organizations to fill the gap in fighting the nation's AIDS epidemic.
Team members — including Gloria Cox-Crowell, co-chairwoman of Allen Temple's AIDS ministry — face fines and deportations if convicted. Members were ordered to surrender their passports and appear in court Sept. 27, but lawyers hoped to get the hearing moved up so they could return to the United States within a few days.
Allen Temple's groundbreaking AIDS ministry was started in 1987 by now-pastor emeritus J. Alfred Smith Sr., a former president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention and American Baptist Churches of the West who teaches preaching at American Baptist Seminary of the West; and Robert Scott, a physician and church member who died in 2009.
Scott, who in 2004 became the first African American licensed to practice medicine in Zimbabwe, began work at Mother of Peace, a Catholic charity started in 1994 by two South African nuns who felt led to begin an orphanage for children living with or affected by HIV/AIDS in Mutoko, a small town located 100 miles from the capital city of Harare.
Later he was invited to work in Harare at the Centre for AIDS Services, started by activist and therapist Lynde Francis, one of the first women in Zimbabwe to disclose her HIV-positive status to draw attention to the disease. She died in 2009 of AIDS-related complications after living with HIV for 23 years.
According to Allen Temple's AIDS ministry website, an estimated 25 percent of Zimbabweans — 1.3 million people — are infected with HIV/AIDS and only 15 percent are currently receiving antiretroviral medications, which help stave off the disease's effects.
For $150, the ministry says it can provide life-saving anti-AIDS medication for an adult or child for one year. The ministry team hoped to dispense medicine to about 800 patients on the current trip, but according to media reports the drugs were impounded and may not be given to people in need.
In addition to its work in Zimbabwe, Allen Temple Baptist Church provides HIV/AIDS medical and social services and prevention-awareness education in Oakland and surrounding communities.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.