Today, December 1st is World AIDS Day and I wanted to spend a few moments dropping a short post about the importance of today. It’s not a holiday or a day to celebrate; today is a day to conservate -Humanity, that is.
Even though HIV/AIDS no longer makes the “hot topics” list with most media outlets, we need to be just as concerned about the disease now as we did when we first became aware of it. The fact that it is not a “hot topic”, in my personal opinion, is one reason we still have a significant number of new cases among women and young people.
Currently, there are over 34 million people worldwide, living with HIV/AIDS. Of that group, 50% are women. Globally, HIV/AIDS related death is the leading cause of death among women.
According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control), 1 in every 3 new HIV case reported were young adults between the ages of 15-24; 22% of these being young girls. There are over 3.2 million children living with the disease as well.
Although the number of new cases is falling, even 1 case in a world as technologically advanced as ours is 1 too many; we’ve got to get HIV/AIDS back on the ‘Hot Topics” list!
While scientist, researchers and physicians are making strides to find a cure for this deadly disease, the best way to keep the disease from spreading is through prevention. Prevention not only requires that we educate ourselves about the disease and how to contract it, but it also requires us to have frequent conversations about safe sex and annual testings.
Please take the time to visit AIDS.gov to get more informed, so that you can get more involved in spreading the word to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS!
Blessings to you!
Steen
The Butterfly Bridge 