World AIDS Day 2007

First, I would like to offer the following video I created from two great sources: TransHouston and Shona’s Flames in the Looking Glass: I presented this video at a panel this morning on Trans & HIV/AIDS that I shared with Mucha, Mucha Pleasure and Lola.

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Each year World AIDS Day is remembered on December 1st. World AIDS Day originated at the 1988 World Summit of Ministers of Health on Programmes for AIDS Prevention. Since then, it has been taken up by governments, international organizations and charities around the world. Including here in Hartford. And of course the major Queer/LGBT organizations of Hartford organized major activities in remembrance. Err, strike that and make that the Institute for Community Research, CT AIDS Resource Council and the Hispanic Health Council who organized several days of excellent dialogue, discussion and arts entitled Ris [Up] Lift: Hartford’s World AIDS Day. “We need to make noise,” says Evelyn Baez, a researcher at ICR who chairs the Hartford World AIDS Day Committee. “We need to let people know that AIDS is still with us.” Sadly the attendance at the Saturday Panels was disappointing, especially in consideration that the AIDS epidemic is one of the most destructive health crises of modern times, ravaging families and communities around the world. By 2006, more than 25 million people had died and at least 35 million people were living with HIV. An estimated 4.3 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2006. I was recently listening to a Hartford Community TV show that indicated Hartford has a higher than usual percentage of women infected and that a major source is HIV infection among injection drug users. However, I need to research the facts/statistics and will report in a future blog. Let it suffice to say that I must include Ct TransAdvocacy in that list of Queer/TLGB organizations that have not done enough visible educational work regarding HIV/AIDS, especially considering the major impact HIV/AIDS has on the Trans community. However, I am committed that this will change as we enter 2008.