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World AIDS Day

By Alexa

I don't know about y'all, but when someone tells me what a great communicator Ronald Reagan was, I have a different take on his "legacy."

My name is Ryan White. I am sixteen years old. I have Hemophilia, and I have AIDS.
When I was three days old, the doctors told my parents I was a severe Hemophiliac, meaning my blood does not clot. Lucky for me, there was product just approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It was called Factorate, which contains the clotting agent found in blood.

While I was growing up I had many bleeds or hemorrages in my joints which made it very painful. Twice a week I would receive injections or I.V.'s of Factorate which clotted the blood and then broke it down. A bleed occurs from a broken blood vessel or vein. The blood then had no where to go so it would swell up in the joint. You could compare it to trying to pour a quart of milk into a pint-sized milk container.

The first five to six years of my life were spent in and out of the hospital. All in all I led a pretty normal life.

The Ryan White CARE Act.

Each week, 3,000 people die from AIDS in Africa alone. 

How can we help?  Lots of resources here.

In advance of World AIDS Day, the United Nations released some chilling statistics:  Nearly 40 million people now have HIV/AIDS; there were more than 4 million new infections this year, and where HIV prevention programs have not been sustained, the number of new infections has increased.

Read the stories of some HIV survivors in California here.

Please give blood if you can.  Donate to your agency of choice.  If you can't?

Wear the red ribbon.  Promote AIDS awareness.  Help anyone you can to understand the importance of prevention, testing and how many people (30,000 per week are dying of AIDS.

The thing to remember is that AIDS doesn't discriminate.  You can be male or female, adult or an infant, white or black or any color in between.  You can be gay or straight.  You can be rich or poor.  As long as this devastating disease has no cure and no vaccine, we are all guardians of Ryan White's legacy. 

 

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on December 01, 2008 (boomark / email).