Today is World Aids Day. It is being recognized around the world. Google and Twitter have changed their homepages to a red background.

Aids Epidemic Update reports that the total number of world-wide infections has been declining by 17% over the last 8 years. Still 33,4 million people are infected with HIV – that’s more than ever before. The victims live longer

due to improved therapies that weren’t available in the early stages of the epidemic. Treating these patients requires a lot of resources. Therefore every prevention of an infection is saving us a big amount of money.

Just imagine if some of this money not spent on treatments would flow into increased prevention efforts?

Based on an estimate 2.7 million people were infected with HIV last year. 2.3 out of these 2.7 million infections are estimated to have happened in the Sub-Sahara region. The second region of new infections is South East Asia with 310,000 new infections. Europe (40,000) and USA (52,000) have much lower numbers.

72% of all new HIV infections in 2008 took place in the Sub-Sahara region. 91% of all new infections among children happened in this area.

On the positive side: 45% of all HIV Infected pregnant woman did receive medication to lower the risk of passing HIV on to their babies. This number went up from 33% only one year ago.

A total of 15.6 billion USD were used to help the HIV/AIDS patients world-wide. 25 billion USD would be required next year to provide all patients with the necessary support. A fraction of that amount can help to make a big difference in preventing the HIV virus to spread out (One of our biggest focus areas is the prevention of rape which can be a huge factor for new infections).

We are facing the question of our solidarity with the crisis regions of the world. We at Ubuntu Now have made our choice. There are many ways to support this fight and there are numerous organizations doing great work. We partnered with one of them but you sure can find your own ways to help.

Today is a day to step up to the plate.

PS:
Here is a calendar of World Aids Day events from around the world. Maybe it is not too later for you to visit one of them.

Posted under HIV / AIDS