Somewhere over the rainbow, originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.

Next December 1st is World AIDS Day, and i think is a good moment to remember our friends and all the people in the world, victims of the HIV.

Since June 5, 1981, when AIDS was first recognized, it has killed more than 25 million people. In the world there is an estimated 33.2 million people living with the disease, specially in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the 64% of the HIV-positive people. Furthermore, this people has to live with the “AIDS stigma”, ostracism, rejection, discrimination and avoidance of HIV infected people; compulsory HIV testing without prior consent or protection of confidentiality; violence against HIV infected individuals or people who are perceived to be infected with HIV (including volunteers, helpers, doctors, nurses, relatives… any individual in contact with HIV infected people); and the quarantine of HIV infected individuals. In many developed countries AIDS stigma is expressed often in conjuction with one or more stigmas, specially those associated with homosexuality, bisexuality, promiscuity, and intravenous drug use.

Some of my best friends are HIV-positive, one of them knows it since 1992. Luckily, in my country, the treatments are covered by the Public Healthcare System, so they feel quite good. My personal experience with them about the AIDS stigma is not only related to the individual ones (if the hell they talk about exists, sure they will burn there), also traveling with them to New York City in a tourism visit. “…Currently, the USA is one of 15 countries to effectively ban HIV-positive travellers from entry…” (from an article on MedScape Magazine).

Thanks to that post from Rik Riel i knew about the sponsored activities in Second Life for this World AIDS Day. Healthinfo Island (SLurl) has some activities from 09:00AM SLT including workshops, information, tours, … including activities in The Teen Grid.

DenmarkCopenhagen sim (SLurl) is hosting a fundraiser party from 02:00PM SLT to raise money for the World AIDS Foundation.

I’d like to remind also the “Super Fan Happy Club” installation by Arahan Claveau (big hug, Ari! ), sadly this installation is not in Second Life anymore, but you can find images about it in this Flickr set.

Maybe the image in this post can seem too “happy” (the image was not originally took for this post) but is my way to try to talk about hope in a post about something so sad and hard as AIDS.