Puthinam-y2k: Learn more about World AIDS Day.

December 1st is World AIDS Day. Established by the World Health Organization in 1988, World

AIDS Day serves to focus global attention on the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Observance of this day provides an opportunity for governments, national AIDS programs, churches, community organizations and individuals to demonstrate the importance of the fight against HIV/AIDS.

The red ribbon has been an international symbol of AIDS awareness since 1991. The Red Ribbon Project was created by the New York based organisation Visual AIDS, which brought together artists to create a symbol of support for the

growing number of people living with HIV in the US.

The red ribbon is worn as a sign of support for people living with HIV. Wearing a red ribbon is a simple and powerful way to challenge the stigma and prejudice surrounding HIV and AIDS that

prevents us from tackling the global epidemic.

According to UNAIDS estimates, there are now 39.5 million people living with HIV, including 2.3 million children, and during 2006 some 4.3 million people became newly infected with the virus. Around half of all people who become infected with HIV do so before they are 25 and are killed by AIDS before they are 35.

World AIDS Day Around the Globe

Kamini, a girl who lives in a slum, holds an AIDS ribbon while she participate in an HIV/AIDS Red Ribbon Carnival rally along with other slum dwelling and street children on the eve of World AIDS Day in Bhubaneswar, India, Friday, Nov. 30, 2007.

(AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout)

In spite of the troubled times we are living in, there are still people who choose to be pragmatic and sensible, as a way of fighting the reigning hypocrisy of Catholic environments, when it comes to the battle against AIDS. Such is the case of Kevin Dowling, who, after being appointed a Catholic Bishop for the Rustenberg Diocese, 16 years ago, has visited the clandestine housing camps that are home to 100 000 people near the border between South Africa and Botswana.

Almost exclusively inhabited by immigrant men from Lesoto, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, this mining community of scarce financial resources, who works in the platinum mines of the area, has a very small number of

women, half of which are HIV-positive, driven to prostitution as the only means to survive.

The extension of overlapping relationships in this community makes it a playground for the spreading of HIV. The Bishop, conscious of this fact, and risking, in the very least, his job, seen as the Vatican, aside from forbidding the use of condoms under any circumstance, also claims it to be permeable to the HIV virus, decided to build, in 1996, a Clinic, that, aside from incorporating a school and a day care centre, also hands out free condoms, AIDS medicine and counselling on how to prevent the infection.

"Abstinence before marriage and fidelity within a marriage are out of the question here" he said. "The issue at hand is to protect life. And that should be our main goal". "They have to wear condoms and that's it.", Kevin says to whoever will hear him.

no vagina = no sex = no AIDS