Alive & Kicking UK

"HIV/AIDS has unfolded along a pattern we tend to see only in nightmares. It has spread further, faster and with more catastrophic long-term effects than any other disease. Its impact has become a devastating obstacle to the progress of humankind. In 25 short years, HIV/AIDS has gone from local obscurity to global emergency. It took the world far too long to wake up. Denial dogged the response to AIDS. Millions paid with their lives."

Kofi Annan - UN Secretary-General, May 2006

Why should I care?

Because, while you yourself may not be at very high risk, you have to remember that HIV is an infection that anyone can catch.

It shouldn't only affect how careful you are - and you have to be careful to protect your self against HIV - it should make all of us more compassionate and respectful towards those who are living with it.

AIDS (HIV is the name of the virus that causes it) isn't a moral issue affecting "bad" people who do "bad" things. 40 million people in the world have it. In the UK and Ireland, it's the fastest-growing infectious disease there is.

It's a difficult thing to get across. 40 million is a hard number to grasp. If every person in London was HIV positive - every man, woman and child in every bus, shop and house - then that would still only be one-fifth of the world's total. And yet HIV and AIDS are taken completely for granted in the Western world. We don't see it as a big worry. Most of us don't think we're at risk.

It's time we woke up.

It's manageable

It wasn't always like this. Learning you were HIV-positive back in the 80s or early 90s was a death sentence. But now, things have changed. A new kind of treatment, called antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), can keep HIV in check. This means HIV can be a manageable condition - a bit like diabetes. You can live a normal life with it. But only if you have access to these drugs.

As a result, most of the unfairness of HIV just hits the millions of people in the developing world who can't afford them. Every day, 8,500 people die of HIV, the vast majority of whom live in the developing world. The medicines exist to keep them alive. But mostly, they die, because they're poor.

Poverty is both a cause and a symptom of HIV

HIV kills millions of adults in their prime, leaving kids without parents, or anyone to earn money to feed or look after them. It leaves hospitals short of nurses, and schools without teachers. Companies lose trained workers. Economies are destroyed, and countries get poorer.

All this creates a really vicious circle, because more poverty also means that HIV spreads further - because being poor makes you more vulnerable to HIV.

Millions of people around the world can't afford even the most basic things - like enough food, and clean water. When a family is poor or starving, then everyone who can has to work for money or food. It certainly becomes more important than going to school. Kids don't get education because it's too expensive, so they don‘t learn about how to protect themselves from HIV. Once they're sick, they don't get medicines and treatment, because they can't pay for them.

It's impossible to overestimate the importance of education and literacy in the fight against HIV.

Children are worst affected

Children are right at the front line of the epidemic. HIV hits children really hard - and not only the sick ones. Every single day, more than 6,000 children are orphaned by AIDS. More than a third of them are under five.

Spreading HIV

HIV is different from other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Usually, it won't make you ill until ten years or more after you've caught it. What that means is that millions of HIV-positive people don't know that they are infected. And all the time they are unaware that they have HIV, they can be passing it on to others without knowing it.

Stigma - the worst barrier of all

Stigma - the feeling that someone or something ought to be shameful and discredited -happens because people associate HIV with being "bad". Stigma's probably the biggest barrier to success in working on HIV.

People often don't want to go for HIV testing, because they're scared of being excluded or made to feel ashamed if they turn out to be HIV-positive. Feeling like that is something we can all understand. Of course, the ultimate price of that is death. If you don't get tested, you'll never know you're HIV positive. You'll never get treated.

Because sexually transmitted infections - and sex in general - can be so hard to talk about, governments often don't like to deal with HIV until the problem is already way out of control. HIV isn't getting the political priority it needs, in developed or developing countries. But, because HIV hits hardest against those who are most productive - people who are working, bringing up children, growing food, looking after the sick - you can see pretty easily how incredibly difficult it is for a country to develop when it's in the grip of HIV.

The UK and other rich countries have to face up to this problem. At home, we've got to admit - the government as well as us, as individuals - that we are at risk from HIV. We have to understand that that a life spent with this condition, whether or not drugs are available, is a great burden to bear. And we need to treat people who are infected with respect.

We need to help

Outside our borders, we've got to see HIV as the global crisis it really is. The rules of international trade and the amount of aid we give to help other countries need to be looked at, so that we can help those who need it most, in the best possible way. HIV is such a terrible barrier to the development of poor countries that increased aid is not an option - it's absolutely necessary.

HIV and AIDS: some basic facts

• Worldwide, 40 million people are living with HIV, the virus which can lead to AIDS
• 90% of these people live in developing countries
• 15,000 people become infected with HIV every day
• More than half of these are young people, between the ages of 15 and 24
• Living with HIV increases makes people more vulnerable to other infections, reduces people's ability to work and contribute to their economies, and adds to the workloads of the other people who care for them
• By getting involved - in whatever way you want, giving your time, your energy, or even just a little money - you really can make a difference.