Raising awareness on World Aids Day still crucial, though diagnosis no longer

Mani Djelassem, a 17 year old AIDS activist, spoke at the United Nations agency’s press conference. “Surely there is no need for all those who are HIV negative to be positive as this represents failure of our programmes to save them”, said Minister Haufiku. “It should just be HIV, because AIDS implies the end stages of it, but HIV disease is just a chronic disease”.

Treatment for HIV has dramatically improved over the years, but the virus can advance to the killer known as AIDS, an auto immune deficiency. “And our regiments now are most commonly one pill a day for our patients”, said Dr. Van Etta.

“We now know that when someone is on treatment regularly, they’re up to 96 percent less likely to pass HIV on. My T-cell level was 106 and he told me that I had to go on medication or I’d be dead in three months”, she said.

“When you take a look at national averages, there are a minority of people living with HIV/AIDS that are on treatment and doing well”, he says.

Millions around and world and in Central Ohio paused on Tuesday to commemorate World AIDS Day.

The city has 120,000 New Yorkers living with HIV and AIDS, 80 percent of the state’s cases, de Blasio said. Willenson says educating teens and young adults about the disease is vital.

And Canadians deserve credit – through generous AIDS funding and advanced medical research – for being in the forefront of this battle.

“Vaccines preventing as well as vaccines that might be effective in stimulating the immune system in somebody that’s already HIV positive to eradicate the virus”, explained Gulick.

But the final push will be complex and costly, as developing countries try to get more diagnoses and drugs not only to their poorest citizens, but also to those who have been marginalized, stigmatized and even criminalized.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Estimates nearly 19-thousand people in Michigan are living with HIV.

NZAF volunteers were out on the streets on Friday collecting for World AIDS Day and Robinson says: “It is always great to see the energy of the volunteers who collect on the street, it’s great to get money for the wellness fund and other support for people living with HIV but for me this year it is the media interest in ending HIV”.