World AIDS Day


It's the first day of December.  It's World AIDS day.  I've written about it before (https://bfthsboringblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/here-we-are.html), but that was nearly 10 years ago.  And since the current administration seems to want to hide this day in a closet, I'm not one to do that, and especially as this year’s “theme” doesn’t everything need one is: Overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response.

I'm old enough to remember when AIDS began appearing. While news about the disease started making its way around in the 1980s, did you know that they very first case in America MAY have been in 1969 and that in 1976 an 8 year old died in Europe from AIDS?  (The child's parents also died the same year.) Sadly, very few people seemed to care.  It was a "disease of gay men."  (Because why should we care about them?  [Insert extreme sarcasm here]).  That was totally untrue, but...Maybe if we ignore it, it will go away?  (That always works right?)

It took much too long and way too many lives, but thankfully AIDS is no longer a death sentence.  But it still hasn't "gone away."  I doubt as if it ever will (or at least not in my lifetime).  It's there; whether we acknowledge it or not.  We can bury our heads in the sand or we can learn from the past and work to move forward.  I'd like to hope that we'd choose the later...

Rather than drone on, as I too often do, on this World AIDS day, I'd like to direct you to this brief article written by a medical professional at the World Health Organization.  She has more knowledge and information that I do.  And that's where we should try to get our information; from sources that have the facts and the information.

As for me, I reflect on this day every year.  I think back on those who died.  I think of those who still live with the disease (and the stigma that still exists).  I am grateful to those who have cared (and continue to do so) for AIDS patients.  I am grateful for those professionals who continue to work to eradicate the disease. (https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/pressreleaseandstatementarchive/2023/july/unaids-global-aids-update)  May it someday be so.

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