Image via WikipediaWorld Aids Campaign website here.Each year on December 1, people all over the world celebrate World AIDS Day. It was the first ever global health day, the first being in 1988.
Governments, religious organizations, businesses, non-profit agencies, families, and individuals use this occasion to remember the more than 25 million lives which have been lost to this disease and to focus awareness on the many millions more who are currently affected or at risk.
Huff Post Religion has gathered a collection of prayers and writings from diverse traditions which look to offer a feeling of hope on this important day of reflection.
Governments, religious organizations, businesses, non-profit agencies, families, and individuals use this occasion to remember the more than 25 million lives which have been lost to this disease and to focus awareness on the many millions more who are currently affected or at risk.
Huff Post Religion has gathered a collection of prayers and writings from diverse traditions which look to offer a feeling of hope on this important day of reflection.
This article for World Aids Day, December 1st 2011 is by Arthur J. Ammann, MD, President and CEO of Global Strategies for HIV Prevention.
In 1982, he documented the first cases of AIDS transmission from mother to infant, and also the first blood transfusion AIDS patients.
World Aids Day vigil 2011 Kathmandu
Source Independent newspaper He has travelled to some of the most neglected regions of the world where the HIV epidemic has raged for over 30 years, and has seen the reality of this epidemic and its disproportionate impact on children.
More than 90,000 people are currently living with HIV in the UK and globally an estimated 33.3 million people have HIV. More than 25 million people between 1981 and 2007 have died from the virus, making it one of the most destructive pandemics in history.
Christian Aid has partnered with Magnum Photos to launch ‘Stigma under the lens’, a series of powerful audio-photographic slideshows for World AIDS day featuring brave people around the world living with HIV under the shadow of stigma.
The stories examine how stigma manifests itself in everyday life for someone who has HIV, and go some way to explaining why thousands of people would rather not know their status than face discrimination at home, in their community, at work and within their faith. See ‘Stigma under the Lens’ at www.christianaid.org.uk/hiv
WORLD AIDS DAY : Thirty four million reasons to act
How funding cuts could hamper and set back the current progress on AIDS
When the history books are written, they will show that millions of people owe their lives to the Yankee tax dollar, to just a fraction of an aid budget that is itself less than 1 percent of the federal budget.” - Bono on World AIDS Day.(New York Times)
At the time of posting the Pope's annual prayer for World AIDS day was not yet available so I'll add it when it is !!
Meanwhile.............
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, with his message for World AIDS Day 2011 in which he talks about the part that sexual violence plays in the spread of HIV and highlights the crucial role that the Church plays in supporting survivors of such abuse.
Transcript of the video talk is below
This is north-eastern Congo. It's an area which has been at the epicentre of a great deal of appalling violence in recent years. Peace is slowly returning but not always returning very quickly to the minds of those who have suffered most.
The conflict in Congo has made it hideously clear that sexual violence is one of the great tools of war in our age; one of the great means by which people humiliate and subdue others. The women in Congo, especially in this part of Congo, have suffered dreadfully because of this. And the connection between sexual violence of this kind and the spread of HIV/AIDS is one of the most shameful facts of our day.
Trauma is something which cannot be overcome overnight but when people feel they've been abandoned by families, by communities, because of the shame and stigma of HIV/AIDS, the church in this part of Congo has been there for them.
For these people, who have been abused systematically, been raped, violated, abducted often at the youngest of ages -- for these people, the church has been the family that mattered. The church has been the community that has given them back the dignity that they need. The church has given them the hope that they need.
As we seek to confront the terrible scandal of sexual violence as one of the causes of HIV/AIDS, let's hope and pray that communities like the churches here will continue to fight as hard as they can against the stigmatising and marginalising that so reduce human dignity.
I am grateful to have had the opportunity of listening to the experience of women here -- grateful, though it has been hard to hear. I hope the world will be able to hear what is being said here and to see what is being done here.
This article on the role of women in Africa from The Irish Missionary Union depicts the harrowing reality for women in Africa. It is by by John Grace, a volunteer worker in Uganda, who shares his research into the ancient practice of polygamy.
Related articles
- The message in Freddie Mercury's silence (edinburghnapiernews.com)
- Nigeria: 70,000 Newborns Get HIV a Year (allafrica.com)
- HIV/Aids: a timeline of the disease and its mutations (telegraph.co.uk)
- Growing up with AIDS (europe.chinadaily.com.cn)
- World Aids Day 2011: What we now know (telegraph.co.uk)
- HIV/AIDS infections soaring in China general population: experts - Xinhua (news.xinhuanet.com)
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