World AIDS day, history and purpose by Ryan Jewels

Every year on December first we take the time to remember the ones we lost to the AIDS epidemic. In order to know about the history of world AIDS day we must first know AIDS as the disease. AIDS is a syndrome that attacks a person’s immune system or an immunodeficiency syndrome. The first recorded cases of HIV and AIDS were in the 70s and 80s. AIDS starts out as HIV and eventually progresses. It can be transmitted in a few different ways, such as unprotected sex, intro venous drug use, mother to child in birth or breast feeding and rarely through blood transfusions. Since the first recorded cases it has killed more than 25million people worldwide and an estimated 33.2 million people live with HIV and AIDS today. The first world AIDS day was organized in 1988 originally by U.N AIDS. U.N AIDS is the joint united nation program on HIV and AIDS. A major symbol of world AIDS day and HIV/AIDS awareness is the red ribbon. Each year a new theme is chosen for world AIDS day. The first theme in 1988 was communication. Communication can mean anything, like talking to a friend, family member or your partner about the disease or even your or their HIV status. The mission of world aids day is to lead and support an expanding response to HIV and AIDS. This includes prevention and treatment. In 2005 UN AIDS gave the responsibility of world AIDS day to the world AIDS coalition. This year’s theme is universal access and human rights. This basically means you have the right to be healthy. A huge issue in the country is health care. This problem affects everyone especially HIV positive people. If people can’t get there medication then how are they supposed to treat their illness? Another goal of World AIDS day is to help remove misinformation surrounding HIV/AIDS and a big stigma is that all gay men have AIDS, which is not true. This stigma first came to be when AIDS was first seen and an abundance of infected people were gay men. However the growing rate of infection is being seen in straight woman of color. The biggest goal of world AIDS day is education. If more people were educated on AIDS and how it is contracted, there would be a lot less people infected. One of the best ways to protect your self is to educate yourself.