World AIDS Day

Dec 1, 2005 - World AIDS Day!!! Keep the Promise

First time I heard of this was wayyyyyy back in 1997... I was an ardent listener of Time Highway Radio and they had Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir as the ... woman at helm of the Malaysian AIDS Foundation. (now as a teenager, I had grown accustomed to her Musings column at a local daily and that column was one of my favourite column as she wrote about a wide variety of issues. )
During the programme, they had a call in session and I got through. I can't recall what was the question I asked her, but for that I got my first cheque of RM 50.00 for participating.

Shortly after that, after I finished college, I wanted so much to do some social work and picked learning about HIV/AIDS. The main reason was cos this was like an epidemic and it is one disease that does not discriminate.
Read about all I could (though now if u ask me, I might remember bits and pieces of it...)
and felt like I wanted to help out.
So I got involved in helping out in a conference (and in the process made a lot of good friends) The conference was... Phwoarrrrrrrrr a whole new dimension. Met a lot of different people - academics, doctors, patients... and got to learn bits n pieces about legal aspects, social, bla bla bla.... Realli opened my eyes to how much of effort it has to be to combat something as huge as this. It requires effort from the grassroots to the government.

Just a coupla days ago, I read a blog post about testing for HIV, and I thought to myself... Wat a grim reminder to each of us, that the disease is still at large. Statistics are never true...it's most of the time only the tip of iceberg, but more importantly what can we(normal ordinary citizens) do in our bit to combat this ?? It's not just oh... I don't participate in high risk behaviour....i'm not a drug user.... I think the local NGOs all hope that if only each one of us will take the initiative to learn a bit about what this HIV/AIDS thingy is all about and change most of our perception that people who are HIV positive or AIDS don't deserve to be treated as human, at least 50% of the programme is succeeded....

Coupla months ago I had this conversation wif an aunt.. And she was gonna head overseas for a trip but had not yet packed. Mentioned that she needed to pack towel. I asked watever for since she'll be staying at a hotel, she said she's frightened that the towels may haf been used/tainted with AIDS. I looked at her aghast, and then proceeded to explain that the virus kennot transmit liddat....

WHAT HAF U DONE IN THIS ASPECT ?? Don't wait... it's a huge scale thingy....Someday, someone somewhere u know will haf had it....
Read about it... U can almost go to any search engines and type HIV/AIDS....

another community service by:

my8cents