Bloggers Unite for World AIDS Day 2008

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A virus has been sweeping the world for the past two decades, causing a disease which has killed millions of people and which looks likely to kill millions more. The virus is called HIV, which stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. After a period of time this virus damages the immune system, and this causes a variety of symptoms known as AIDS. This time period varies, depending on factors such as access to AIDS drugs, and possibly such factors as nutrition, the presence of other medical conditions, and stress. In the absence of treatment, the average time between HIV infection and progression to AIDS is around ten years.

• The HIV virus is transmitted through blood and sexual contact.

• A person can carry and transmit the HIV virus for years with showing other symptoms.

• HIV slowly invades our immune system, making it vulnerable to other infectious diseases which eventually cause death.

• 20 million people have died so far from AIDS-related illnesses.

• 40 million people are affected by AIDS.

• 14 million children are AIDS orphans.

• The pandemic has hit hardest in Africa but epidemiologists suggest that it is likely there will be an AIDS explosion in India, which already has the second highest number of HIV positive people after South Africa.

• China has one-fifth of the world’s population. The number of people testing HIV-positive rose 67% in China in the first 6 months of 2000. China has only recently stopped being in denial about the incidence of AIDS in China, despite courageous efforts by individual Chinese doctors.

• AIDS has become the leading cause of death of many countries in the Caribbean.

Bloggers Unite is an attempt to harness the power of the blogosphere to make the world a better place. By asking bloggers to write about a particular subject on 1 day of the month, a single voice can be joined with thousands to help make a difference; from raising awareness for cancer, to an effort to better education systems or supporting 3rd world countries.

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On December 1st in recognition of World AIDS Day 2008 I will be blogging  and I hope you will join in too. Both the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) www.nida.nih.gov/ and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of HIV/AIDS Policy’s AIDS.gov approached Bloggers Unite and asked us to come together to share HIV/AIDS information with the blogging community for World AIDS Day 2008.

Together, we can reduce the stigma of this pandemic through our words, voices and actions.

How To Participate – As a blogger, you can help lead this mission. Some of you may already be doing this, so tell your story. Write about it and share it with NIDA, AIDS.gov and the Bloggers Unite community. Even if you are not a blogger, you can be involved.

For information on the link between Drug Abuse and HIV infection

For more information and action badges

For reasons why you should participate