World Aids Day 2011

[Nico]

I know, it's nothing new, but it has not lost its importance. Quite the contrary, given those facts:

    - More than 34 million people now live with HIV/AIDS.
    - 2.5 million of them are under the age of 15.
    - In 2009, an estimated 2.6 million people were newly infected with HIV.
    - 370,000 were under the age of 15.
    - Every day more than 7,000 people contract HIV—nearly 300 every hour.
    - In 2009, 1.8 million people died from AIDS.
    - 260,000 of them were under the age of 15.
    - Since the beginning of the epidemic, more than 60 million people
      have contracted HIV and nearly 30 million have died of HIV-related causes.

I have lost friends due to this terrible disease, and I know that I am not alone. Countless people have lost friends, loved family members, husbands, wives and children because of it. And each time I think about the ones I lost, I realize how precious life is, how fragile and how quickly we can loose it.

Thank you for reading this.

[olive]

Thank you for posting it Nic. I didn't know all of those statistics. They are truly astonishing.

[Beguile's Mistress]

The statistics are astounding, Nic.  I don't know anyone who hasn't been touched by the epidemic in some way and I've lost some wonderful friends because of it.  They showed courage in their fight and their families and friends were loving and supportive as we all should be but the pain of knowing there could be a cure out there that will not benefit them is so hard to bear.

I pray for research that finds a cure and help with any project that comes my way in the fight against this deadly disease.

[Oniya]

Just picked this up on my news-feed.

http://news.yahoo.com/mice-step-towards-vaccine-hiv-180924371.html

The basic premise seems to be that the antibodies are developed outside the patient's (mouse's) immune system, and genes to allow their reproduction are vectored in as a free-floating bit of genetic material in body cells.  It's a big step from mice to humans, but even a little step is a step forward.

[Kendra]

In memory of those we have loved and lost and those who fight every day to live with this disease and those who fight to find a cure.

Thank you for always posting these Aware threads Nich *hugs*
Greatly appreciated <3