World AIDS Day would be observed on Saturday December 1st to focus global attention on the devastating impact of the disease epidemic. Observance of this day provides an opportunity for government, faith organisations, community organisations and individuals to demonstrate the importance of the fight against AIDS.
Approximately 2.9 million people died from AIDS in 2006 while an estimated 38.6 million people worldwide living with HIV at the end of 2005, and more than 25 million people died of AIDS since 1981.
The day serves to remind everyone that action makes a difference in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The overall purpose of the world AIDS campaign from 2005 to 2010 is to ensure that leaders and decision makers deliver on their promises on AIDS, including the provision of universal access to treatment, care, support and prevention services by 2010.
Within that five-year mission, annual campaigning themes are selected which are timely, relevant and adaptable to a number of different regions and issues. There has been an enormous change in the global HIV/AIDS response since 2001. HIV resources increased annually by an average of US $1.7 billion between 2001-2004 and US $266 million between 1996 and 2001. Available funding in 2005 reached US $8.3 billion.
Access to treatment has also increased for people in low and middle income countries. In 2001, 240,000 people received anti-retroviral therapy, compared with 1.3 million people in 2005. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is not a single disease. It is a spectrum of conditions that occur when a person's immune system is seriously damaged after years of attack by HIV.
According to health experts a person who is infected with HIV does not necessarily have AIDS however, all people with AIDS have HIV. HIV damages the body's immune system and renders the body vulnerable to other diseases and infections and its symptoms are most commonly similar to those of any chronic viral infection. During advanced stages of HIV infection, a person may develop any of a number of opportunistic infections considered to be AIDS defining illnesses.