From the North

[b0n0]

December the 1st is World AIDS Day. Please allow me to say a few words on behalf to the
33 million people who suffer from HIV and AIDS.
AIDS is one of the worst epidemics the world has witnessed. The people infected with HIV
often live under appalling and inhuman conditions.
After 25 years with the epidemic, prejudice and condemnation are some of the worst
consequences. If you have HIV or AIDS, you are often isolated and lonely. An outcast of
society surrounded by a taboo and bigotry you have no strength to fight.
HIV and AIDS are tainted with shame.
Remain silent rather than feel how colleagues distance themselves and the family dissociates itself
from you.
Remain silent rather than watch your friends refuse to eat your food, share a beer or
let you hold their child.
Remain silent rather than be denied entry into the USA and many other countries.
That’s how it is to be infected with HIV in Denmark in 2007. Medicine ensures your survival,
but your life is torn apart.
In other parts of the world, prejudice and taboo are the same. Yet the situation is
completely different.
Poverty and ignorance smooth the path for HIV and AIDS. In countries where girls down to
the age of 8 are forced into prostitution, unprotected sex is not a question of protecting
one’s self from HIV and AIDS, but a matter of providing money for food.
There are still religions that do not allow women to protect themselves during sex.
There are still countries where women still do not have the right to decide whom they
have sex with.
In 2007, 2.5 million people were infected with HIV. 2.1 million persons died of AIDS
and 12 million children are orphaned and left on their own.
2007 did not bring about the medical breakthrough that can arrest the disease or prevent
it from spreading.
My hope is that if we stand together the world will see a different future - A future that proves
a life is not torn apart by an HIV diagnosis, no matter where in the world the diagnosis is made.
That together we can raise funds for the research needed to fight off HIV and AIDS.
To achieve this, we cannot let ourselves be defeated. Together, we must fight back.