finally.

World AIDS Day

December 1st is World AIDS Day.

It’s a day to remember, a day to act, a day to speak up, a day to educate, and a day to be educated.

Today, 6,500 people will die as a result of AIDS.

6,000 of those people will leave behind children.

Those children will join the already 15 million children who have lost parents to this treatable disease.

2.3 million children are infected with HIV world-wide.

Most pediatric infection occurs in mother-to-child transmission – the virus infects while the immune system is immature, making it easy for the virus to disseminate through the body.

It is estimated that, without treatment, 50% of HIV+ children in resource-poor settings will die by the age of two.

And here’s the really kicker…with treatment children with HIV can grow up, go to college, get married, have children and grow old. Mothers and Fathers who are HIV+ can live to see their children accomplish these things and so much more.

Have you heard about the Lazarus effect? The medications used to treat HIV are so quick to act that within three months people who could barely hold their heads up are thriving.

See for yourself:

And worth mentioning: There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Faye Greene. An excellent book about the issues of orphans in Ethiopia. Most of whom are orphans because their parents died of AIDS.

In the year 2000 there were 12 million orphans in Africa and more than twenty-five percent of those lived in NIgeria and Ethiopia. Eleven percent of all children in Ethiopia were orphans.

By 2010, between twenty-five million and fifty million African children, from newborn to age fifteen, would be orphans. In a dozen countries, up to a quarter of the nation’s children. The numbers were completely ridiculous.
Twelve million, fourteen million, eighteen million-how could numbers so high be answers to anything other than “How many stars are in the universe?” or “How many light-years from the Milky Way is the Virgo Supercluster?”

Who was going to raise 12 million children? Who was teaching 12 million children how to swim? Who was going to sign 12 million permission slips for school field trips and pack 12 million school lunches? Who was going to by 12 million sneakers that light up when you jump? Backpacks? Toothbrushes? 12 million pairs of socks? Who will tell 12 million bedtimes stories? Who will quiz 12 million children on Thursday night for their Friday morning spelling test? 12 million trips to the dentist? 12 million birthday parties? Who will offer grief counseling to twelve, fifteen, eighteen, thirty-six million children?

And another good book: 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa A book about 28 different people in more than 20 different countries who are HIV+ or have AIDS or are fighting to help someone who is HIV+ or has AIDS.

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