World AIDS Day

Today is, of course, World AIDS Day. It is well-past time to reassert our moral guidances, value systems, and efforts. Today is not a day of celebration, but rather to reassess our neglect.

Reuters:

Rage and remorse marked World AIDS Day in Africa on Thursday as the continent worst hit by the global crisis remembered millions of deaths in a pandemic that even new drug treatments are doing little to slow.

In Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, President Olusegun Obasanjo went for a morning jog with HIV patients while in the tiny kingdom of Lesotho officials launched the world's first door-to-door national HIV testing campaign.

But Swaziland, which has one of the highest adult HIV infection rates in the world at some 40 percent, scrapped World AIDS Day events entirely while South Africa's health minister repeated her much criticized prescription of garlic and beetroot as an AIDS treatment.

Across Africa, AIDS patients blasted political leaders for failing to come to grips with the disease and the international community for doing too little to help.

"Money that has been earmarked for HIV/AIDS has gone into everything else but AIDS," fumed Meris Kafusi, a 64-year-old AIDS patient in Tanzania who only recently began receiving life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs.

Despite the conflicts globally, even Bush has pledged to push forward on the effort [obviously, being held accountable to do so is a great American shortcoming...]. But the value-shift must be one that occurs with our moral choices moving toward compassion as a society, and away from supporting corporatism and profits as a society.

Regardless, do what you can with one of these links.