Next Wednesday Is Your Day!
By Novell Zwange – GLOBAL – Next week on Wednesday, 1st of December is World AIDS Day. We at Shout-Africa believe this is a chance to raise public awareness, and hopefully breakdown some of the unwarranted stigma that surrounds HIV. There are many ways in which you too could do something to make a difference.
World AIDS Day is an opportunity to bring people together to raise awareness for HIV. By lending a hand or supporting an AIDS initiative you can help improve livelihoods or raise awareness of HIV and get people talking.
Started on 1st December 1988, World AIDS Day is about caring, supporting, increasing awareness, fighting prejudice and improving education. The World AIDS Day theme for 2010 is ‘Universal Access and Human Rights’. World AIDS Day is important for reminding people that HIV has not gone away, and that there are many things still to be done.
According to UNAIDS estimates, there are now 33.3 million people living with HIV, including 2.5 million children. During 2009 some 2.6 million people became newly infected with the virus and an estimated 1.8 million people died from AIDS.1
The vast majority of people with HIV and AIDS live in lower- and middle-income countries. But HIV today is a threat to men, women and children on all continents around the world.
