World Aids Day 2013

World AIDS Day is held on 1 December every year to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and to demonstrate international solidarity in the face of the pandemic.The day is an opportunity for public and private partners to disseminate information about the status of the pandemic and to encourage progress in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care around the world, particularly in high prevalence countries.
This year’s World AIDS Day theme is: Getting to zero: zero new HIV infections, Zero discrimination and Zero AIDS-related deaths. The World focus for the 2013 campaign is improving access to prevention, treatment and care services for adolescents within the age range of 10 to19 years. This is a group that continues to be vulnerable despite a number of efforts to make things right for them.
The theme has three strategic directions which are getting to zero new infections, getting to zero aids related deaths and getting to zero discrimination. According to UNAIDS, the ‘getting to zero campaign’ runs up to 2015 the goals that have been set to be achieved within the period  include prevention of all new HIV infections among people who use drugs, vertical transmission of HIV eliminated and AIDS related maternal mortality reduced by half and sexual transmission of HIV reduced by half.
In Malawi, a Demographic and Health Survey that was conducted in 2012 revealed that HIV prevalence rate has reduced from more than 15% in the previous years to10.6%. Among other strategies, the CONDOMIZE Campaign is helping sexually active people from being infected with HIV and the Prevention of Mother To Child Transmission (P.M.C.T) is also helping a lot as HIV free babies are born from HIV positive mothers.
Still more, the best we can do is to eliminate stigma and we should also discourage discrimination against people who are living with HIV!