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Now the need is bigger than that, but that's a huge difference. And when you look at it on the ground, it's a night-and-day difference. When drugs are available, people are much more willing to be tested. Why would you want to be tested if there's no treatment? And when people know their status, then prevention, counseling, and other things are much more effective. Stigma is reduced.

On treatment, the news is excellent. On prevention, the news is good in some parts of Africa and challenging in other parts. We're just beginning to deal with the orphan crisis in Africa, because it's just going to be massive.

This is a case where I've been able to see a decision made in the Oval Office by the President in late 2002, and then a couple of years later, I met the first person in Uganda under the program to receive ARVS, who got them just about 18 months after the President announced the program. For a government program, that's pretty extraordinary.

What do you make of the recent report of corruption that has prevented some money from reaching AIDS patients in Uganda?

It's one of the main difficulties in Africa. Through our AIDS program, we've been very effective at working on the ground directly with nongovernmental organizations (both faith-based and non-faith-based) to bypass government bureaucracies that sometimes waste money. That, I think, is a good model of development. And PEPFAR has done that much better than, say, the Global Fund or other efforts.

It's almost like the church-to-church model we're seeing with Rick Warren and others.

Exactly. I visited a lot of these groups that we work with in a variety of contexts, including Uganda. It's as simple as identifying extraordinary people and getting them the resources they need to do what they need to do. We can't do it. The key to all kinds of development is just finding local partners, principled people who want to make a difference in their own country.

Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

A profile of Michael Gerson from 2001 is available from USA Today.

Gerson told a group of journalists in late 2004 "the danger for America is not theocracy." He told the Christian Science Monitor, "I don't believe that particularly Christian faith can be identified with any party or any ideology."

Gerson was listed among Time's 25 most influential evangelicals in America.

You can hear Gerson in this interview on NPR.

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August 2006, Vol. 50, No. 8