"All You Need is Love"

Terrific coffee, global reach, giant heart. According to Starbucks, their partnership with (RED)™ over the past year "has generated money equivalent to more than 7 million days of medicine to help those living with HIV in Africa." Watch how they chose to celebrate (below) then visit the Starbucks Love Project, lend your voice to the chorus or a drawing to the Love Gallery to send an even greater Starbucks contribution to the Global AIDS Fund.

World AIDS Day 2009

Remember the lost...
mothers, brothers, babies,
laborers, teachers, artists,
middle-class, rich, poorest of poor.

Rejoice in the progress...
Widespread treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission.
Infected are living longer.
Stigma barrier acknowledged.
Discriminatory US travel ban lifted.

Renew our commitment...
to treat HIV until it is stopped,
promote universal access without discrimination,
replace stigma and fear with respect for human rights
and compassion for every human soul.

"The theme of this year's World AIDS Day is Universal Access and Human Rights. For me, that means doing everything we can to support countries to reach their universal access goals for HIV prevention, treatment, care and support - all the while protecting and promoting human rights."
-UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe
2009 World AIDS Day message

Optimism in UNAIDS Report on AIDS Epidemic

UNAIDS today distributed extremely hopeful data reflecting years of tireless, challenging work to change behaviors, formulate new medicines, level the playing field on treatment cost and availability, reduce stigma, keep the money flowing and never, never give up the fight to end AIDS.

Still... too many deaths, no cure, more work needed to end discrimination & treatment inequity, complacency causing return to old, unsafe behaviors and spread of misinformation. Be vigilent, stay informed and contribute to the hopeful trend.

Global summary of the AIDS epidemic, 2008

View more presentations from UNAIDS.

India quickly posted this easy-to-digest summary of the data via livemint.com

Obama Ends US Travel Ban on People with HIV-AIDS

Unlike bird flu or swine flu or various other respiratory ailments, HIV is not an airborne virus. Though widely accepted for many years, America remained one of the last dozen countries in the world banning people with HIV/AIDS from cross-border travel. I applaud President Obama and the advance work of the Bush Administration for finally bringing an end to this practice in the U.S.

Obama Ends U.S. Travel Ban On Visitors, Immigrants With HIV-AIDS - Political Punch

Of course, if you read the comments appended to the linked story, you'll get a sense of why these popular bans stick around long after science proves them unnecessary. Fear and hate continue to fuel discrimination in many forms. While free to express it, such discrimination has no place in public policy.

Impatient Optimism

Bill and Melinda Gates just finished their live webcast "We Are Living Proof". The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation boldly stepped into the growing global health funding gap to significantly bump progress that's generated hope and optimism where none had previously existed. Watch this video and spark the hope in you:


Yet we are impatient. Even the richest man in the world can't do it all alone and has told the US Government as much. Among other advances, a new rotovirus vaccine and immunization expansion are now saving millions of lives. HIV vaccine research is a noble but singular path to eradicate the AIDS pandemic, and I'm impatient...

The first investing rule is diversify, diversify, diversify. Be proud to support safe sex education, services & treatment for those infected by HIV, vaccine research and innovate science that seeks to take on HIV from a different direction. Fuel your optimism and demand that everyone stay in the game. It's making a difference.