Keep the promise

The theme for World AIDS Day 2007 and 2008 is “leadership”. This theme will continue to be promoted with the campaigning slogan, “Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise.”

Leadership was selected as the theme for World AIDS Day to encourage leaders at all levels to stop AIDS. Building on the 2006 theme of accountability, leadership highlights the discrepancy between the commitments that have been made to halt the spread of AIDS, and actions taken to follow them through. The theme empowers everyone from individuals to organisations to governments to lead in the response to AIDS.

International statistics

People living with HIV:
* 33 million people living with HIV worldwide
* 30.8 million adults
* 15.5 million women
* 2.0 million children under 15

New HIV cases in 2007:
* 2.7 million total new cases
* 2.3 million adults
* 370,000 children under 15

HIV-related deaths in 2007:
* 2.0 million total deaths

All figures from UNAIDS.

In Singapore, new cases of HIV infection have rise from 42 to 423 in the last 16 years. In Thailand, they have fallen from 143,000 to 17,000. What made the difference?

Education, awareness and safe sex helped in Thailand. So did easy access to generic drugs that can keep people with HIV healthy for many years. Infectious disease experts and social workers say battling HIV is tough in Singapore because many patients cannot afford critical medicines which are not subsided. Some smuggle home cheaper drugs from Thailand. Others skip treatment, risking an earlier death from AIDS.

Credit to :
UNAIDS
World AIDS Campaign
National AIDS Trust (NAT -UK)
The Straits Times