Educate for prevention on World AIDS Day
Around this time of year, most students get so caught up in academic work, social lives and extracurricular activities that we lose sight of the world around us. However, World AIDS Day is not a day that should be regarded with only a passing glance, like so many other commemorative holidays. Just look at Labor Day, which is recognized by most students as merely an extra day to sleep in. While the timing is inconvenient for Rice students, Dec. 1 is set aside as one day out of the year for us to stop and recognize the impact that AIDS has on society.
According to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS, approximately 39.5 million people worldwide are infected with HIV. That number translates to approximately 11,286 times the population of Rice, or eight times the population of Houston. In this past year alone, 2.9 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses. To put that number in perspective, this figure is approximately four times the total number of U.S. combat deaths since the Revolutionary War.
This year marks only the 25th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS, when a few doctors in the Los Angeles area recognized an abnormal immunodeficiency in a small group of homosexual males. The actual date and location of the origin of the disease are unknown, but for something only a few years older than most of us, AIDS has had a devastating effect.
While 63 percent of those infected are miles away in Africa, the epidemic is spreading into Rice’s backyard at an alarming rate — 24,000 Houstonians are HIV positive, and rates of infection are not declining. Being inside the hedges and the bubble in which most of us live, many at Rice never consider that this disease can affect them. But in today’s world it is increasingly uncommon not to be somehow impacted by AIDS.
This general lack of knowledge about HIV is true for much of the population, and even many of those who are at high risk for HIV infection do not even know the basic facts.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, approximately 25 percent of those who are infected do not even know they are HIV positive. For this epidemic to stop, we need a public that is informed about HIV.
As well-educated future leaders, it is imperative that we, Rice students, educate ourselves about HIV/AIDS now to protect ourselves not only from the disease but the common misconceptions and the stigma that HIV/AIDS bears. So, take some time this World AIDS Day and learn something new about HIV/AIDS. Educate yourself on HIV transmission, cost of treatment or the physiological effects of the disease. Maybe in your lifetime you will be lucky enough to not be confronted directly with AIDS, but that would put you in the fortunate minority.
Sanna Ronkainen is a Martel
College junior.
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