Know Special Facts about World AIDS Day December 1 GK 2019

WORLD AIDS DAY

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Every year the global community celebrated December 1 as World AIDS day. As per the rough estimate of the World Health Organisation, the world has over 37 million people living with HIV. More than one and a half million were newly affected with HIV in 2018. About 7.7 lakh people died of HIV related causes. If this condition gets going we will witness another 5 lakh causes and deaths in 2020.

World AIDS Day was celebrated for the first time on December 1, 1988. Up until 1996, the day was organized by the World Health Organization.

This day is the day for the global community to unite and fight against HIV. This day also means to support those ailing people with HIV. This day also commemorates those who died of several diseases related to HIV/AIDS.

HIV is a dangerous pandemic in human history. It was identified only in 1984. We are yet to find a cure for the syndrome. As per the UN, Africa is the most HIV-hit continent in the world. Africa has almost 25.7 million people living with HIV as per the report of WHO in 2018. As per this data, America has 3.5 million people living with HIV. South Africa, Mozambique, and Nigeria are among some countries which had the most number of death related to AIDS up to the year 2018.

Image Courtesy: NAT

People wear red ribbon which symbolizes awareness and support for HIV people. The idea of red ribbon originated among some artists in New York in the year 1991 when they were discussing a project for an awareness Organisation. They chose the red color as it symbolizes boldness, passion, and love to show their fighting spirit against the disease/condition, and compassion for the infected people and support for their families. They formed an easy to make design for it. The Pink ribbon for the awareness of breast cancer is inspired by the red ribbon. 

UNAIDS is a global effort by the Joint Nations of UN to end AIDS by the year 2030. It has offices in about 70 nations and the budget for Joint Programme for 2018 was US $242 million. It started its operation in 1996. 

National Aids Trust (in short "NAT") is an international charity organization based in the UK for awareness on AIDS/HIV. It was started in 1987 as an NGO by the UK Department of Health. This year they are celebrating the AIDS Day with Rock the Ribbon Together Campaign. They are the founding partner of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative based in New York, USA. UK Government was the first in the world to fund 14 million Pound as grant to the HIV vaccine research project. In 1995 NAT launched a Companies campaign to promote healthy practice on HIV and employment. 

IAVI which is globally based in New York, USA has one of its regional offices in New Delhi, India also. Its mission is to discover and develop various vaccines to prevent the infection of HIV. IAVI has helped the development of many scientific centers of excellence at research institutions in various African nations.

The Coalition to Accelerate and Support Prevention Research (in short "CASPR") is a program designed by IAVI to address the challenge of lack of access points in prevention methods of HIV. This is funded by the US Agency for International Development and is supported by Emergency Plan for AIDS relief by US President. Africa and India are Partners in this program. 

IAVI's Translational Research Laboratory is located in Faridabad, Haryana, India. They are designing and evaluating preventive vaccines for HIV. In India, about two million people are living with HIV.