Tuesday is World AIDS Day

The virus that causes AIDS was identified less than 35 years ago but has left a lasting impact on hundreds of millions of people.

That’s why today-on, Tuesday, December 1, World Aids Day- awareness, learning your status and education is especially important.

This is largely a product of the globe’s collective efforts to address the epidemic.

Even though aids is now treatable, its hopes continued focus on prevention can help cut infection totals even more.

The number of confirmed new cases, however, fell by 4.5 percent between 2013 and 2014 to 39,951, according to Health Minister Marcelo Castro.

“We have the Minnesota aids project, which is state wide, but we have an office here in Duluth”.

“Already we have reached 15.8 million people with life-saving treatment”.

Here are three simple ways we can all help build an AIDS-free generation. Fewer older people get tested too, leading to late diagnosis and initiation into anti-retroviral treatment (ART). New York City’s Department of Health’s doctor Demetre Daskalakis played a major role in getting the drug, Truvada, FDA approved for HIV prevention in 2012.

Fortunately, in more than two decades since World Aids Day began-HIV is no longer a death sentence, but more of a chronic illness that can be treated if it’s caught soon enough.

“Everyone, everywhere should have access to treatment”, Simon Bland, Director of the Joint UN Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) Office in NY, told reporters at a press briefing at UN Headquarters Monday.

It’s time to take action. One conversation could end up saving lives. “What we still need now is what we needed then – the collective will from our private and public leaders to join us and seize upon the opportunity we have before us”, Gifford stated. The prospect of dying from the virus is terrifying, but the fact of the matter is it’s both preventable and treatable. “Everyone who stripped for us is living with HIV”.

HIV typically is spread through unprotected sex or sharing contaminated needles. “We call on these companies to stop discriminating against people living with HIV/AIDS and denying them access to financial services”.