World AIDS Day

This Saturday will mark the 25th World AIDS Day. The first such day was established in 1988 to raise awareness of the AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV infection.

Between 1981 and 2007, more than 25 million people died from AIDS. But more and more people today are living with HIV – research has led to medical regimens that make it more of a chronic disease to be controlled, rather than the almost certain death sentence it once was. Still, globally, an estimated 33 point three million people are H-I-V positive. And AIDS still takes close to two million people each year – more than half of them in Sub-Saharan Africa.