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| January, 2004 For updates, visit Our News as well as the individual country reports which can be found under Global Aids |
Correspondents from Ghana, Sierra Leone, USA, Zimbabwe, Britain, Canada, Nigeria, Sudan, South Africa, Somalia, Zambia, Gambia, Kenya and Australia contributed to this global exchange.
The Australian AIDS Fund Inc contributed the following which was also duly published:
"With Africa bearing the brunt of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, more and more of us non-Africans should push the message that the most fearsome weapon of mass destruction in the world today is HIV.
Brian Haill, The Australian AIDS Fund Inc., Australia"
We continue to do what we can in many areas...maintaining this widely read AIDS information website; providing advice services; and continuing with our special outreach program, Camp Seaside in Victoria which the Straight Arrows group will conduct on our behalf in March this year and later as well.
If you turn to our NEWS area you'll be able to see the photo report on November's Camp Seaside.
Some of our other activities are also reported in the News Area. Go and have a look!
Live and let live! That's the global theme we're asked to reflect on today,December 1, World AIDS Day,as the United Nations co-ordinated World AIDS Campaign for 2002-2003 focuses on the elimination of stigma and discrimination.
For Australians, the unforgettable face of HIV is the haunting image of Eve van Grafhorst, the New South Wales toddler of the mid 1980's, the first Australian child to be HIV-infected through a blood transfusion.
She bore the brunt of a vitriolic in-your-face discrimination that shamed the nation and caused her to flee to New Zealand for sanctuary, a shame for which the nation finally apologised.
As an anti-discrimination battler, young Eve sold her hugs to raise money for the cause.
She inspired the creation of our own organisation which over the years projected her as an image for a Schools AIDS (Awareness) Day in mid July (her birthday); established Australia's first supported accommodation facility for infected women and children; and Camp Seaside, Victoria's only respite camp for infected and affected families.
Appropriately, Australia's variation on the world's slogan is "AIDS doesn't discriminate - people do!" Perhaps that should read "AIDS doesn't discriminate. Do you?"
Now that Australia itself is experiencing the horrors of global terror ... the result of so much discrimination ... perhaps it's also appropriate to remember another heroine, Anne Frank, whose courage shone out in the hatred of the Second World War.
These two young girls, Anne and Eve, deserve to find a special place in our thoughts today.
They lived the challenge to live and let live!
The overwhelming scale of the global HIV pandemic was highlighted at the 14th International AIDS Conference held in Barcelona, Spain, in July.
In the Asia-Pacific region, an estimated 6.6 million people were living with HIV/AIDS in 2001, including one million adults and children newly infected in 2001. India was the country most affected by HIV/AIDS in the Asia-Pacific region, with 3.97 million people living with HIV/AIDS in 2001. Sub-Saharan Africa is the worst affected region in the world. In 2001, an estimated 3.5 million people were newly infected and 2.2 million people died following AIDS. An estimated 28.5 million people were living with HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2001 and 11 million children had been orphaned, due to HIV/AIDS.
In a cumulative profile to March 31, 2002, the HIV Epidemic in Australia reveal:
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Many thanks to all those involving in organising and responding to the event this year!
It made a valuable contribution toewards funding the works and programs of The Catholic AIDS Ministry (CAM) in Melbourne through the assistance of the Catholic Education Office in Melbourne.Our thanks to them too!
In a speech to the United Nations,Dr Peter Piot,executive director of UNAIDS has called on governments to do more to provide HIV prevention and care for young people.
Every day,6,000 young people aged between 15 and 24 years of age,and 2,000 children under the age of 15 are infected with HIV.Over 13 million children have been orphaned by AIDS,and 1,600 children die of AIDS every day.Children and adolescents under the age of 18 represent about 10 per cent of the global total of 40 million people living with HIV.
This is the theme of the two-year World AIDS Campaign 2002-2003.
Stigma and discrimination are the major obstacles to effective HIV/AIDS
pevention and care.Fear of discrimination may stop people from seeking
treatment for AIDS or from acknowledging their HIV status publicly.
People with,or suspected of having,HIV may be turned away from health
care services,denied housing and employment,shunned by their friends
and colleagues,turned down for insurance coverage or refused entry into
foreign countries.In some cases they may be evicted from home by their
own families,divorced by their spouses,suffer physical violence,or even
be murdered.
Stigma and discrimination must be both confronted and challenged.
Some of the above examples have been documented in Australia..and still
are!
A regional director with the United Nations has warned that the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Asia Pacific could reach monumental proportions in the years ahead.
Already,over 7 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in the Asia
Pacific.And remember,60 per cent of the world's population live in this
area.A rise in injecting drug use is fuelling the epidemic.
Injecting drug users already number over one million next door in Indonesia....and
there are an estimated 3 million in China.
Every day about 1,500 people are newly infected with HIV in South Africa. 4 million there are already HIV-positive and there's little sign of a slowdown in the infection rate.
Activists are still battling the government to accept that anti viral drugs must be supplied to pregnant mothers to protect tens of thousands of unborn babies. Its a battle that international governments must lend their support to as well.
Russia too is seeing its HIV/AIDS emergency worsening. One report says one million Russians may lose their lives to AIDS over the next 10 years. Official figures say there are about 200,000 infected but others say this is vastly under-estimated and more likely to be closer to one million.
In March, 2002, the Australian Federal Government promised 100 million
dollars to help fight the AIDS epidemic in our own geographic neighbourhood,
that's in addition to some 11 million dollars to help African members
of the Commonwealth in their struggle against the pandemic. At the end
of last year, over 28 million people were living with HIV/AIDS in Africa.