Today is the twenty-first annual observation of World AIDS Day. I have a tendency to forget about it, even though a family friend close to my own age is HIV-positive. Thanks to meds, he is thriving.
Women, in part because they suffer from HIV and AIDS at higher rates, in part because they are less likely to receive effective treatment, are not so lucky. According to the World AIDS Campaign, AIDS is the leading cause of death for women of child-bearing age, and a full 50% (and rising) of those living with HIV are women.
If you want more information, click through to read the PDFs (available in seven languages) on the Women’s Campaign and other documents about women and HIV/AIDS, and consider donating your time and/or money to an charity like AVERT, The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, or The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, or take part in any of the events taking place around the globe.
Are you doing anything special to honor World AIDS Day?
Recently the AIDS Quilt came to a school near me, and I volunteered to be on the team presenting it. Chatting with some others there, I learned (remembered?) about the transmission of AIDS thru anal tissue, and about the increasing incidence of anal sex in teens, sometimes as a substitute for p in v.
It took me a week to build up to it, but eventually I had yet another sex talk with my daughter, this time about anal sex.
So I would say, if there’s a young person in your life, add that topic to your list of things to discuss with her or him.
Is it wrong that I want to celebrate by drinking a ton of diet Coke and taking a whizz on the grave of Senator Jesse “AIDS is God’s punishment for gays” Helms?
I help manage grants for an NGO that focuses on the treatment and prevention of TB, which is the number one killer of PLWA. Especially in Africa. If I were to suggest a course of action today, I would make a donation to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (GFATM). http://www.theglobalfund.org
Becky: No. No, it is not.
rodriguez: I’d never thought about that. Good on you for volunteering, and for having that hard talk w/ your girl. (Lard, the idea that my mother would ever talk to me about anal sex is…mind-boggling.)
Marigold: Thanks for the recommendation; that’s a charity I hadn’t heard of. And your work sounds really important (and really overlooked), so thank you for that, too.
I’m doing a lot of remembering. I was involved with our local AIDS service organization for many years, then our needle exchange. Today makes me think of all the friends I’ve lost and how far we’ve come in terms of treatment.
Years ago, I went to the funeral of a guy I knew who had died of AIDS-related pneumonia. It was in some boonie town about an hour away from here, and his parents staged this funeral as though he had died in a car accident or something. The term AIDS was never mentioned, and his long time partner, who was sitting in the front row and who had taken devoted and tender care of my friend throughout a long and ugly illness, was never acknowledged. When the scheduled speakers were done, attendees were invited to speak. I sat there and thought about getting up and talking about how he really died and about how his partner had taken care of him.
But I didn’t. I wasn’t brave enough. It’s something I’ll always be ashamed of. I think of these guys every year on World AIDS Day and hope that if it ever happens again, I’ll do the right thing. We’ve made medical progress, but I suspect that the general attitude towards PLWA hasn’t changed much since those days.
ImtheMarigold, thanks for giving some noise to TB, one of the oldest diseases known to man (found in egyptian mummy lungs) and yet we are still working with tests and drugs that are at least half a century old, primarily because TB mainly kills the poor of the world. It’s made a total comeback in the age of AIDS. I’m gonna have to email you; dying to know who you work for! I’d also point out that WHO and other international and national orgs are recommending that HIV-affected individuals go on treatment earlier in their illness — problem being of course that we already have a worldwide waiting list 5 million deep for anti-retrovirals. We have made stunning progress against this disease in the last decade, but the fight ain’t over yet, especially not in my hometown of DC, where 3% of the population has HIV. I will also take World AIDS Day as an opportunity to remind my state and federal prisons and jails about improving access to EVIDENCE-BASED (aka medicine-assisted, not weekly support groups where we try to kick our heroin habit by talking to Jesus) treatment for injecting drug users, currently unavaiable for most people incarcerated for their addiction in the US, and a huge driver of the HIV epidemic worldwide.
And that is the end of my soapbox speech for the day.
Email away, I’m not sure if I need to post it here or if you can get it from our lovely proprietors!
can you email me at jdregent@gmail.com? thanks and sorry for the threadjack all!