The View From My Knees

Original photo by Mechanic

This week I’m featuring a post by Radical Vixen in honor of World AIDS Day:

She refused my request to see him in the hospital. My aunt brought my niece to see him. My mother was upset by this and I wasn’t allowed to see my aunt or niece for awhile until it was obvious they hadn’t caught “the AIDS”. People didn’t call it HIV back then. I remember hearing adults call it “the AIDS”.

Read the rest of her story

Whatever your reasons, please donate to help fight this deadly virus, and to support the millions of people already infected.

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HIV/AIDS Facts and Statistics:

• South Africa leads the world in people living with HIV/AIDS, with 5,500,000 adults and children. The United States ranks 8th, with 1,200,000, and the United Kingdom ranks 41st, with 68,000.
  source

HIV/AIDS News and Links:

• Newly HIV-Infected Gay Men Select Other Infected Partners
  The study included 27 men with acute HIV infection. This refers to the one-month period immediately following HIV infection, when a person tends to have the highest levels of HIV circulating in their blood. This makes it much more likely they’ll infect a partner during unprotected sex.
• New Under-the-Radar HIV Clinic Finds Underserved Clientele
  On the Friday before Thanksgiving, the doctor’s schedule was just about maxed out with 10 patients on the books. In the three months since it opened, clinic staff estimate, about 50 patients have come through the doors of the Madison Clinic at Harborview Medical Center’s Bremerton satellite.
• Gates Foundation gives EVMS $28.5 million for HIV research
  An Eastern Virginia Medical School program that is trying to develop a topical gel that can prevent sexual transmission of the virus that causes AIDS has received a $28.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, school officials announced Friday.
• Dr Petra Boynton on World AIDS Day 2007
  This year World AIDS day focuses on the theme of ‘breaking the silence’. The aim is to encourage people to be more open about discussing HIV/AIDS and related issues in an attempt to reduce stigma.
• China AIDS rate slows, main transmission now sex
  The country will have an estimated 50,000 new infections in 2007, compared with 70,000 in 2005, though groups like men who have sex with men are increasingly at risk, according to a report by the State Council, or Cabinet, and the United Nations.
• UNAIDS
  Uniting the world against AIDS
• HIV/AIDS Treatment Programs Will Not Keep Pace Unless Number of New Cases Decreases
  Experts at the hearing testified that the “most important battle” in curbing HIV/AIDS is stopping HIV transmission but disagreed on how to stop the spread of the virus, the Globe reports. Some witnesses at the hearing debated the effectiveness of a PEPFAR requirement that one-third of HIV prevention funds focus countries receive through the program be used for abstinence-until-marriage and fidelity programs.
• Democratic Presidential Candidates Respond To Questions About Needle-Exchange Programs, Sex Education Do you support the replacement of funding for international and domestic “abstinence only” HIV prevention programs with scientifically based, comprehensive, age-appropriate sexuality education programs?