World AIDS Day Brings Large Numbers & Many Messages

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From India to Canada the world & its leaders are thinking about AIDS today. I started thinking about AIDS, and what it means to me.

I must have been around 8 when my mother told me the friend we occasionaly had dinner with was not going to be able to have dinner with us anymore, because he needed to rest and spend time at the hospital.

It was 1988, and she explained to me that he had become ill, and that he had AIDS. A short time later he passed away, and as a young child so did any thought of what this disease meant or even was. At that time people only seemed to whisper those four letters. The years advanced, and I began to learn more about it from school, parents, and friends. News would break about famous people who had aquired HIV, Magic Johnson, the character on Life Goes On, and then it would fade. It was not until I became a young adult in my early twenties that AIDS really appeared again. I lost two friends, my co-workers, and was given a first hand education on the realities that come with dying from AIDS, the rapid decline, the loss, the act of transmission, while its mystery still remained so intangible.

And here we are all most 25 years later, still trying to deal with the shear power of what has transformed into an epidemic, a relentless string of people who are still falling ill, rising numbers every moment.

This is the day to reflect, remember, and hope for our future, and to grow our education base to meet the needs of the people.

Here are some additional links I found while searching around:

A first in 16years...

A word from India...

Messages and ribbons, here, here, and here....

Aid Group Asks for more help...

[q/]"President Viktor Yushchenko conceded his country was losing ground in the race to curb one of Europe's fastest growing epidemics, saying 100,000 people have been registered as HIV-positive. Every day, 40 citizens of Ukraine are diagnosed with HIV, and eight die from AIDS, Yushchenko said.

"Such figures are shocking," Yushchenko said in a published address timed to coincide with World AIDS Day. "We can't be indifferent to them."[/q]