Some Free Disease Knowledges

An Answer to HIV/AIDS

June 6, 2008 – 3:00 am

In my spare hours I’ve started reading “Dangerous Surrender” by Kay Warren. Kay is the wife of the SoCal pastor Rick Warren who wow’d the world with “A Purpose Driven Life” not to say the sales at Costco. The Warren’s are experts at packaging issues and providing the doorway to let the ordinary person get involved. It seems that Kay found her purpose. HIV/AIDS is Kay’s passion and through her work over that past five years, and this book, she’s breaking open an issue, that frankly, many of us have had our eyes closed to for the past 20 years.

I have a friend who works for World Vision and recently on a visit to our house they told me about WV’s Experience: AIDS project. Through a timed entry event you walk through a tour of how HIV/AIDS affects the lives of people. You do this by choosing a story and then wind your way through a maze of exhibits and information. At the end, you find out if you are affected with HIV or not. If you have the gumption, you can try the virtual experience.

Is the current marketing of this pandemic going to make a difference? Currently it’s estimated that over 6,800 people become infected with HIV each day. That would mean that the city of Portland, Oregon, population 545,140, would be completely infected with HIV by the end of this summer.  But it’s unlikely that any of us will have even a small percentage of friends or relatives or neighbors who will succumb let alone all of us at once.  According to the Center for Disease Control, ” Oregon reported 5,740 AIDS cases to CDC, cumulatively from the beginning of the epidemic through December 2005″ There’s little chance to step into this world locally if you live in Portland. But if you care to, you can check out the Portland Area Global AIDS Coalition

Regardless of this, I have friends in Rwanda, and they step out of their house and into the streets where they live and deal with the pandemic everyday.  Sometimes I’ve attempted to come up with all kinds of intellectual answers to resolving this issue.  But I’m not even halfway through Warren’s book, and I can see that she has put into words an answer that any of us can apply, in short, it’s about dying. It’s about dying to self, society and success. The letting go of your life to live a life firmly established in truth.

What is the truth? Once when I was a college student, I took a class in time management where they asked, “What do you want to have written on your tombstone?” The point of the exercise was to get you to think about purposeful planning. Well, the truth is this, it doesn’t really matter what’s on your tombstone.

What’s your next step? If you were put in charge of figuring out a way to make progress on resolving this issue, what would you do? How do you think the global marketing of HIV/AIDS pandemic changes the landscape? Think about it and then tell me.

Related articles:

1. “ad” a little of this “ad” a little of that…Voila! Truth!
2. The Writing is on the Wall for UNAIDS
3. The 13-Year-Old Humanitarian
4. The Freedom and Price of Truth
5. Understanding ebook Compilers and How to Make a Positive Selection

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