1 December: World Aids Day

lørdag den 4. december 2010

1 December was World Aids Day.

On that day my Facebook friends were wishing each other a happy 1 December. I however, had absolutely no sense of Christmas nearing, as I relate Christmas time to cold weather and the temperatures here in Cape Town are in their twenties at the moment.

I may be blind, but I have never been aware of the World Aids Day, even, I was kindly told by Danish friends, annually HIV/AIDS related events are taking place, also in Denmark. In the future, when looking back at my time in South Africa, I will surely remember 1 December as the day HIV/AIDS started entered my sphere of awareness.

Just a few statistics:

South Africa is the country in the world with the highest number of people infected by HIV/AIDS. The country with the highest percentage of infected people is Swaziland. India, though “only” 1 percent is infected, is the country with the second highest amount of people living with HIV/AIDS (due to the large size of the population). Statisctic vary but up to 30 percent of the South African population might be infected with the disease.


In the evening of 1 December I went, together with 3 friends, to a World Aids Day Gala concert at the Artscape Opera House of Cape Town. Many people wore red close and we were all given red ribbons to wear. Different people who are working to combat HIV/AIDS were being honored during the evening and three women, who live with AIDS, gave their testimonies and the audience was encouraged to support and help instead of stigmatizing people with HIV/AIDS.

In this week I had the privilege of holding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGS) Event “Everyone gets a bite of the cake” with staff and steering group of the South African NGO, Connect Network. The event has been held several times in Denmark during the summer/autumn of 2010 and has recently been translated into English, which made it possible to launch it for the first time
outside of Denmark!

Connect Network includes a number of Christian children’s and women’s organizations in Cape Town and its surroundings. The MDG event is an outdoor “journey” to 8 different stations. At each station the participants learn about one of the MDGs. MDG 6 is to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS. In one the activities of the “journey” the issue of stigma is being addressed. In another activity the debate on what is the best way of preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS is taken up. I’ve done the activity before, but this time was by far the most dynamic time I’ve done the part of the event focusing on HIV/AIDS. For the participants the activity was not mere theoretical, as it would tend to be with a group of Danish participants. For the South African participants it was very practical and tangible issue that they are all confronted with in one or another way.

Through my student work at a Danish development NGO I’ve been aquatinted with HIV/AIDS projects but sitting in Denmark, the issue seems so distant and hard to relate to. For instance it seems extremely difficult to understand the problem of people not wishing to be tested for fear that being tested HIV positive will lead to them being stigmatized. Eventually that person, if being HIV positive, will die an early death, as not knowing your status also means that you will not get life-prolonging treatment.

These were just some of this weeks thoughts on HIV/AIDS. I currently continue my journey into the field by reading the award winning book “Three-letter plague” by the South African author Jonny Steinberg. The purpose of the book to understand the mind-set of people and communities where a large number of people die from AIDS because they don’t get tested. The book is interesting reading which is extending my new journey into a better understanding of HIV/AIDS further than just 1 December.