It doesn't seem like a year since I wrote this.
But it has been a year. Tomorrow is December 1, World AIDS Day. The numbers:
39.4 million people with HIV or AIDS
4.9 million new infections this year
3.1 million deaths
Give or take 200,000. These numbers are just too huge for me to comprehend, and fighting a public health battle with numbers this big just seems so...I don't want to say hopeless. But it certainly isn't hopeful.
I just saw an article yesterday about Jim Wooten's new book We Are All The Same. The article opens with the problem of the staggering statistics and closes with this quote:
In contemplative moments, Wooten often recalls a mantra of the wise-beyond-his-years Nkosi Johnson: "Do all you can with what you have in the time you have in the place you are."
More tomorrow.
Posted by Nic at November 30, 2004 06:25 AM