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REPORT OF 2008 WORLD AIDS DAY ACTIVITIES

Bianca Marks

19/03/2009 3:51 pm

Every year on December 1, organizations, groups, and individuals around the world plan events to participate in World AIDS Day. These events highlight the overwhelming number of individuals facing challenges as a result of their HIV infection and honor those who have passed away. Many organizations also use this time to focus on prevention, treatment, care and support efforts.

The first World AIDS Day was organized by the World Health Organization on December 1, 1988. Originally, the day was organized by UNAIDS. UNAIDS chose a new theme each year after consulting with other HIV/AIDS organizations to determine the most pressing topics. In 2005, UNAIDS officially handed over responsibility organizing and coordination of World AIDS Day activities to The World AIDS Campaign (WAC), an independent HIV/AIDS organization based in the Netherlands Since WAC took over the campaign, the theme has been “Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise.” This theme is meant to target policy makers and health authorities to encourage them to meet the targets that have been set on the way to providing universal access to HIV treatment, care, support, and prevention services by 2010. The theme “Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise” is expected to continue until 2010, with sub-themes chosen each year For World AIDS Day 2008, the sub-theme is “Lead- Empower- Deliver”.

This is the second year that the theme has focused on the topic of leadership. This theme is meant to highlight the fact that many individuals and organization have already offered up their leadership skills, and now policy makers need to find the resources to deliver on their promises. The campaign is calling on everyone; including families, communities, civil society organizations, and governments to take the initiative in helping meet the target goals. World AIDS Day in Nigeria Like the rest of the world, World AIDS Day celebrations in Nigeria gathered momentum when World AIDS Campaign (WAC) took over responsibility of organizing and coordinating the activities in 2005, hitherto, we had token commemoration of the day but the essence and objectives for the celebration were not achieved as it was merely seen as one of the opportunities for the government of the day to curry international favour. With WAC takeover in 2005, more Civil society organizations became involved in the celebrations and took up the challenge of reminding governments at all levels, CSO coalitions and the business communities of their roles and responsibilities to People living with HIV especially in the areas of policy change, treatment, care and support to PLWHA. In 2007, the World AIDS Campaign entered into partnership with CiSHAN to coordinate the World AIDS activities in Nigeria. WAC was to provide some funds as well as technical advice, while CiSHAN was to mobilize the Constituent coordinating entities (CCEs) to jointly carry out agreed programmes and activities during the period to meet the objectives of the year’s theme.

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