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Why Should You Care That World AIDS Day Is Tomorrow?

UN Secretariat Building in NYC, 2001. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

Why Should You Care That World AIDS Day Is Tomorrow?

Because HIV isn't the only untreatable virus out there.
Ebola and Smallpox are two highly contagious viruses. Both have the potential to be lethal. And both are completely untreatable. Yes we have a vaccine to help prevent a smallpox infection (though the majority of our population is now unvaccinated), and when Ebola outbreaks occur we can treat the symptoms. But there is no injection of antibodies that target infected cells to stop the virus before it furthers the infection. Researching HIV and ways to stop such an aggressive virus leads to technology and brainpower to stop other terrifying pathogens- many of which are actually much more virulent and easily transmitted than HIV.
Because we shouldn't stigmatize a death sentence.
Newsflash! Although sexual contact is the most common method of transmission, sex isn't the only way you can get HIV, and it's actually not the most infectious method of exposure. Blood transmission is actually one of the fastest ways to get infected with HIV. How many first responders do you know? Police officers, paramedics, EMTs, nurses, fire fighters, Good Samaritans. When you're treating a patient in the field and you don't have appropriate protective equipment, you're at the greatest risk of infection if the patient is positive. Unhealed cuts and scratches are entry points for the virus, as are your eyes, your mouth, any mucous membrane. Ebola is also transmissible due to contact with infected blood; Zika Virus is transmissible due to sexual contact- let's not stigmatize a terrifying disease such as HIV, which that leads to death 100% of the time, because many cases are sexually transmitted.
Because in the last ten years, the rate of new infections has dropped THIRTY SIX percent year over year.
That's amazing! That's 700,000 fewer cases each year. Seven million fewer cases over 10 years. Public health interventions such as education, condom education and provision, mobile/rapid testing operations, rapid antiretroviral treatment, and continued ART for those who come up positive all protect our global public from becoming new cases. What's even more exciting is ART rates are over 50% for known HIV cases!
Unfortunately it's not all good news. Twice as many people are HIV positive now, than ten years ago. Part of this is due to the extension of life expectancy with continued antiretroviral treatment, but part of this is because we have neglected to implement rapid testing strategies and treatment strategies in the most at-risk regions and with the most at-risk populations. We have failed to reduce stigma and get people treated. We have failed to incorporate massive global leadership in prioritizing addressing HIV. In this instance, we have failed the 36.7 million people who are HIV+.
By the way, that's more people living with HIV than the entire population of Canada and nearly the entire population of California. It's greater than the entire state of Texas, our second most populous state.
Because no child should be born with HIV.
Mother to Child transmission is one of the most common transmissions when the mother is HIV+ since mom and baby share a blood supply. But in 2016, Antiretroviral therapy for HIV+ pregnant women was estimated at 76%. That's incredible, especially since has significantly reduced the number of MTC transmissions! In fact, four countries (Armenia, Belarus, Cuba, and Thailand) have reduced MTC transmission so significantly that they were formally validated as eliminating MTC HIV transmission as a public health problem.
Tomorrow is December 1st 2017, World AIDS Day. Think about it. Drop the stigma.


#WorldAIDSDay #WorldAIDSDay2017
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