December 1st: 2002 World AIDS Day will focus on taking stigma and discrimination out of AIDS
"Stigma and Discrimination": this is the slogan for 2002 World AIDS Day, which will be hold world wide next December 1st. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), stigma and discrimination are the major obstacles to effective HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Therefore the aim of such a campaign is to encourage people to break the silence and the barriers, as only by confronting stigma and discrimination will the fight against HIV/AIDS be won. "Help us to fight fear, shame, ignorance, and injustice worldwide: live and let live" is the message launched throughout the media by UNAIDS. "HIV remains a highly stigmatised condition. HIV related discrimination is widespread. Discrimination affects the quality of life of people with HIV and makes care and prevention efforts more difficult as people are alienated from testing, treatment and prevention services. People often harbour irrational fears towards people who have HIV. This is due to the association of HIV with the taboo subjects of blood, sex and death; irrational fears of plague and contagion based on myths and ignorance about how HIV is transmitted; and the impact of HIV on marginalised and unpopular social groups such as drug users, Africans and gay men",
The National AIDS Trust (NAT), the UK's leading advocate for action against HIV/AIDS, is actually co-ordinating the World AIDS Day campaign in UK. NAT has been developing an integrated advertising campaign, "Are you HIV prejudiced?", which questions directly the reader/viewer's own attitudes to people with HIV. In a newspaper advertisement, the headline is written on the eyes of a young man and asks: "Could you look me in the eye if you knew that I had HIV?".
World AIDS Day, which is recognized internationally on December 1st every year, was held for the first time in 1988 to focus global attention on the HIV/AIDS epidemic across countries, organizations and governments.
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