You can make a difference

Dec 1st, 2009 2:55 PM UTC
By Kara Arsenault

In honor of World AIDS Day, Susan Smith Ellis, CEO of our sister organization (RED), wrote a great article for the Huffington Post.

Check out an excerpt of her piece below—and read the full article here. Don’t forget to share it with your friends!

On World AIDS Day, we don’t celebrate with fireworks or champagne. We take note of what has been accomplished and we resolve to keep at it. We are proud of what our partners have accomplished. We like to say that they have gained market share for life (and for themselves) and in so doing they have changed the course of a part of human history.

In 2006, it was estimated that only 8% of HIV-positive pregnant women in Ghana received the antiretroviral medicine necessary to reduce the chance of transmitting HIV to their unborn children. Without the medicine, the chances of HIV transmission were (and are) roughly 50-50. With the medicine, the chances of HIV transmission drop to between 1 and 2%. By the end of 2008, nearly 40% of Ghanaian women in need received the medicine that will transform the lives of their children. That is market share for life. And it is growing year-over-year.

On this World AIDS Day, there is improvement in HIV detection across sub-Saharan Africa. The percentage of pregnant women who were able to take an HIV test increased from 17% in 2007 to 28% in 2008. We have every reason to believe that the percentage figure will increase substantially again this year (the final data are not yet available). The goal obviously is to keep ramping up testing until the chain of HIV transmission from mother to child is one day broken altogether. That day is coming, if we keep after it.

And don’t miss the new video recently posted to the (RED) website on the Lazarus Effect (the extraordinary transformation that often takes place in critically ill patients after just months of ARV treatment):

TAGS: (RED), From Our Partners, World AIDS Day, World AIDS Day 2009