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World AIDS Day - Don't Forget The Crisis
smallsquirrel
I remember when I first started hearing about AIDS. I was probably in high school. We all thought it was something only gay people got. There were all kinds of asinine rumors like that. Stupidity. Then the movie Philadelphia came out, and we all started to wise up. The newspapers and TV stopped referring to it as the "gay plague" because, as it turns out, straight people were getting it too.
And the world was forever changed.
Now we're still facing a crisis. And I think it's worse, really, because nobody seems to be scared of it anymore. There are drug cocktails that will prolong your life. You don't see too many people walking down the streets covered in Kaposi's sarcomas anymore. It's all been sanitized. Made to look so much more easy to deal with. And it is great that we have made huge strides in treatment. But this also means that many local clinics, such as the Whitman-Walker clinic in my former home of Washington D.C. are losing funding. People in the US don't see AIDS as a crisis anymore.
Tell that to one of my friends who has been living with AIDS for years now. Tell him it's not a crisis when he gets pneumonia and almost dies - again. And because he's been too sick to work regularly, tell him it's not a huge issue anymore when he doesn't have enough money to pay his mounting hospital bills. Or when he falls on the floor at 2 AM, too weak to stand up, and there is no one there to help him up.
This story repeats itself all over the world. Children by the millions all over Asia and Africa are AIDS orphans. The dad contracts AIDS from a prostitute, brings it home to mom, and they both die. Sometimes the mom has kids that are also born with AIDS. There is no sex education in these villages, and no anti-retroviral medicines that would easily stop the mother from passing the virus on to the child during the birthing process and prolong her life.
Or the medicines are available but there are complicating factors. Take life here in India for example. No one wants to talk about sex, so it goes to figure that very few are willing to talk about how to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Or the fact that they might have them.
Look at what happens when they do. I remember seeing on the news the plight of one family who had AIDS. The mother went to the maternity ward to deliver and they placed her in the isolation ward and every single doctor in the place refused to attend her birth. The woman's husband delivered the baby then was made to take the sheets outside and burn them. No one came to examine the baby, and of course you can imagine that nothing was given to the mother to prevent her from giving the baby AIDS during the birthing process. We've all also seen the plight of village children forced out of school because no one wants an infected child next to their child despite any and all precautions taken.
AIDS is still a very serious threat to the daily lives of millions upon millions of people all over the world. THERE IS STILL NO CURE FOR AIDS. IF YOU GET IT, YOU WILL DIE.
What can you do? Give money to a reputable organization, either locally or globally. Even better, volunteer your time. Don't be afraid to talk to your doctor about your past sexual history, and make sure to get an AIDS test if you have ever had unprotected sex. And most importantly, use a condom.
World AIDS Day - Don't Forget The Crisis
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temporal
URL
December 1, 2007
10:09 AM
ss:
timely:)
at a gathering i once recommended a mandatory pre-marriage blood tests
you cannot imagine the bricks hurled at me
HIV-aids is primarily associated with sex - but in reality a lot of is caused by tainted blood used in the hospitals as well as needles
and innocent people can acquire it just as easily
smallsquirrel
December 1, 2007
10:41 AM
many countries *do* require a mandatory AIDS test to get a marriage license. it is a good idea, and should be implemented everywhere.
and yes, HIV can be transmitted through blood products, though most countries test stringently for that now. however, needle sharing is still a massive cause for the spread of HIV.
Sanjay Garg
December 1, 2007
11:15 AM
After the India HIV rates were recently reduced to 50% of what was being claimed by UNAIDS, the HIV prevalence per 100 looks somewhat like this:
South Africa - 12.4
USA - 0.40
Spain - 0.30
Dominican Republic - 0.72
Thailand - 0.90
Russia - 0.66
Ukraine - 0.88
Portugal - 0.35
Maybe all countries should be like India where allegedly "No one "wants to talk about sex" ;-)
temporal
URL
December 1, 2007
11:31 AM
sanjay:
yes the UN numbers were bumped up
but
HIV-aids is still a deadly killer disease and should be relentlessly checked
smallsquirrel
December 1, 2007
12:40 PM
uh. sanjay... maybe you would not act like such a smug [edited] if you ever knew anyone with AIDS. this is not about politics... it's about a disease.
get off your high horse.
v.c.krishnan
December 2, 2007
12:44 PM
Dear Sir,
I understand your emotion but I am unable to appreciate it or should I say moved by it.
If we screw around we get screwed! (I apologise for my alnguage), I am using it as I do not want to be Oscar Wilde or a Shakespeare to express such thoughts!
All talk, and polls, about sex, Ha! what a great idea. It is OK. Do not get caught or expose yourself! What wonderful advice, and then we want funding to search a cure for it. MY FRIEND GO JUMP!!
If you feel I am a prude well let it be I am a prude, but I am not to let my hard earned money to go help others to screw around!
The specious argument will be. What about blood tranfusions. We are the people who work in the organisations who collect blood, screen them and supply them. Let us do that job effectively and sincerely, as a committment, and not as a job! Let us contribute more for the equipments which screen blood or researchers who can develop new equipments which can do this job well.
Sentiments have no place when you screw around, let us face it and accept responsibility as mature individuals.
Life is too short. Let us not waste one day for assisting screwers, let them get screwed! let the others use it positively by doing the screwing around as a true PRUDE will do and does not go with sentiments thrown around.
Regards,
vck
smallsquirrel
December 2, 2007
01:00 PM
well what about all those innocent women whose husbands frequent prostitutes then come home and demand unprotected sex from their wives, who then become pregnant and also give it to their unborn child?
you really don't have a clue what you're talking about. and higher-than-thou people like you are the ones who gets screwed by karma.
smallsquirrel
December 2, 2007
01:00 PM
oh, and for the record, I am a woman and don't you forget it!
kerty
December 2, 2007
05:46 PM
AIDS has originated out of certain life-styles. It has entered the blood supply of nations only thru participants of such life styles. And now, it is claiming innocent lives as well through contaminated blood supply created by these lifestyles. Until these lifetyles are re-evaluated, made to pay the price and abandoned, it defies sense of justice and facing the karma. To find solutions medically would be futile. Because they do not address the root problems of these lifestyles. It means those life-styles want to be consequence-free and unaccountable and want the price for their sins to be paid by innocent society at large, by spreading their lifestyles even more in the name of AIDS awareness and safe sex. Why should people who have nothing to do with these life-styles pay the price? Why should people who do not want to participate in these lifestyles need safe-sex, AIDS awareness or need to alter their life-styles or be exposed to awareness of other lifestyles? In stead, AIDS awareness campaign has become a platform to promote such lifestyles, make them safer and consequence-free, make them acceptable to society at large, and demand rights and recognition. To me, that is politics of extortion and blackmail hiding behind innocent victims of aids that are produced by these life-styles in the first place. Only education and awareness we need is where safe sex does not mean sex with rubber, but monogomous sex only within marriage, where awareness does not mean slogan of AIDS kills, but certain life-styles kills, not compassion or rights for people who promote/engage in such lifestyles but punishment and banishment of such life-styles. And cost of such awareness campaign and taking care of innocent victims have to be paid from special taxation levied on these life-styles. Make it possible for AIDS victims to file class-action compensatory law-suits on people who promote these lifestyles in their commercial ventures ie arts, books, movies etc. That is the kind of AIDS awareness campaign India needs.
smallsquirrel
December 2, 2007
11:06 PM
kerty... it's pretty clear to me at this point that no amount of logic or clear thinking can make it through to your brain.
FF
December 3, 2007
11:42 AM
Well said kerty...
Objections(to your views) from the perpetrators of these lifestyles is understandable.
Tax(and only taxation) is the panacea to all such ills. We must realize the power of money and put it to better use of human kind.
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