What a difference a day can make

This article is published today in the Cardiff Post.

John Lennon famously said that there are no problems, "only solutions", but there are some problems that seem far from being solved and that don't seem to be going away.

They may seem to fade into the background for a while, but this doesn't mean that they no longer exist. AIDS is one such problem and last Friday reminded us of this. December 1 was World AIDS Day, a day which focuses our attention back onto the misery that this disease causes.

I am always shocked when I am reminded of how many people are affected by HIV and AIDS. Worldwide, around 40 million people are living with HIV and that number is increases in every place every single day. In our own country, over 70,000 people are living with HIV — a Millennium Stadium worth of people — and more than 7,000 more people are diagnosed as HIV-positive every year. It is estimated that one third of people living with HIV in the UK are unaware that they have the virus. A staggering 25 million people have already died from AIDS.

Of course, there is a lot that can be done to prevent the spread of HIV and we must continue to make information and resources available to people in order to do this. As Elizabeth Taylor once said, "It is bad enough that people are dying of AIDS, but no-one should die of ignorance."

There is also a lot that can be done to treat HIV infection nowadays. Anti-retroviral drugs have meant that in the West, at least, a HIV-positive diagnosis is not the death sentence it once was. In other areas of the world, however, this is not the case and we face huge challenges in the effort to control HIV infection. I've seen for myself the terrible devastation that AIDS causes in Africa both for those dying from the disease and for the children they leave behind. In addition, in Africa, HIV infection is linked with TB infection. In Kenya, I visited one woman who lived in a windowless shack with 15 children and grandchildren to care for. She had lost two daughters to AIDS and was herself suffering from TB and was HIV-positive.

In Africa in particular, we must make sure that lack of information and prejudice about HIV and AIDS are overcome and that people become more aware about how the disease is spread. We must also make sure that access to affordable medicine is improved. We must strive to meet the target of providing universal HIV prevention, care and treatment by 2010.

If you would like to get involved and see what a difference a World AIDS Day can make, visit the website. We can all help to find the solution to this problem together.