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20-25-2
Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of the global World AIDS Day campaign. An estimated 33 million people are living with HIV/AIDS wordwide.
Closer to home, this year marks the 25th anniversary of the AIDS Committee of Toronto.
Every day, two people are newly-infected with HIV in Toronto. Half of all new infections are people under 24.
Why?
Really, why?
Here are some recent stats from ACT:
Most Recent Trends (2006 and 2007)
- 625 Torontonians were diagnosed HIV positive in 2007. 698 Torontonians were diagnosed HIV positive in 2006.
- 60% of all of Ontario’s positive HIV test reports in 2006 were in Toronto.
- Gay, bisexual men and other MSM continue to form the largest group of new HIV infections in Toronto. In 2007 they accounted for 61% of all new diagnoses.
- New HIV infections among women in Toronto have decreased in the past year. In 2006, women accounted for 27.3% of adult positive HIV test reports in Toronto. In 2007, women accounted for 17% of adult positive HIV test reports.
- Mode of HIV Transmission in Toronto, 2007:
- Men who have sex with men (MSM) 61%.
- Injection drug users (IDU) 3%
- Heterosexual contact 12%
- People from countries where HIV is endemic 18%
World AIDS Day Events in Toronto:
25 years of action: A visual display of the work of ACT: Tuesday November 24 – Monday December 1 (World AIDS Day), AIDS Committee of Toronto
5th Annual World AIDS Day Breakfast: Monday, December 1, 2008, Arcadian Court
World AIDS Day at the University of Toronto: Monday, December 1, 2008 4:30 – 6:00pm, Hart House
World AIDS Day 2008 – Stop AIDS. Keep the promise. : Monday, December 1, 2008
World AIDS Day Forum for Toronto’s Portuguese-speaking Communities: Monday, December 1 2008, 5:30 – 8:30pm, St. Christopher House
Voices of Hope – The Toronto Concert: Monday, December 1, 2008 7:00pm, Metropolitan Community Church
One Million Red Ribbons: A World AIDS Day event for youth: Monday, December 1, 2008, Dundas Square
World AIDS Day with the AIDS Candlelight Vigil Committee, The 519 Community Centre and Toronto PWA Foundation: Monday, December 1, 2008, 5:30PM, 519 Community Centre (PDF!)
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bstewart23 
June 2010A note about the images… flickr’s being hardass about the images hosted on their servers, which is their right, so in an effort to ease their concerns, I’m moving the ones they consider contentious to another server. That’ll mean there’ll be quite a few broken images until the move is complete. My apologies for the inconvenience.
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12 comments
a) ignorance
b) misinformation
c) denial
d) rape
e) tina
f) desperation
g) “It won’t happen to me”
h) “I’m gonna live forever”
i) “I’ll show you”
j) stupidity
k) addiction
l) poverty
Seriously? I think your post is awesome and I agree with you. But some people don’t, apparently:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_med_challenging_aids
Gah. My poor dad is spinning in his (proverbial) grave.
“President-elect Obama and President Bush will both deliver remarks today commemorating World AIDS Day: “Both will attend a civil forum hosted by Saddleback church pastor Rick Warren in D.C., where Bush will receive be awarded a medal for his efforts fighting AIDS.”
I. Am. Screaming.
I concur with Michael. Under the misinformation heading, I would add the “It’s a manageable disease”, and pharma advertising showing gorgeous healthy men in their advertisements for HIV medications. There is a disconnect amongst those in our community who did not bear witness to friends and loved ones dying from the ravages of this disease. They also don’t have a clear idea about how shitty and painful the “management” regimen is for many taking meds, nor the physical consequences are from long term use. Too sad. We’ve lost so many in one generation, must we really take on another round of staggering loss in order to learn a hard lesson?
As a 27 year old safe-sex loving guy. All I can guess about these numbers is “ooops,” “whatever, “He looked safe!” and “It was just once!”
Also, although I used to refuse this idea, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the youth, say the 13-25 year olds are an example of the blind leading the blind. Those of the older generations, save a few, aren’t speaking out loud enough about their experiences, about the friends they lost, about the anger, about the torment, about the government’s slow response, about the sense of chaos, urgency, emergency, desperation, grief and loss and somewhere along the lines between Safe Sex advocacy and the celebration of living-healthy-with-HIV we lost focus on “staying negative” and it became the same ol all inclusive, bureaucratic, red-taped rainbow parade where the focus shifted from “staying negative” to “let’s encourage them to ‘stay negative’ while being really, really, really, really, really, really, really careful that we don’t offend anyone – let’s be so careful and all inclusive that we’ll get to the point where we’ll miss the point, but hey at least we haven’t offended anyone..right?”
or something.
Wait where was I? Oh right, watching bareback porn in my local gay bar.
I’d guess that a), c), and f)–with a dash of g)–probably account for 75 to 80% of new gay male infections in Toronto.
[...] bstewart23 wonders why there are two people a day infected with the HIV virus in the city of Toronto. I blame online ads. [...]
When I was working at an HIV prevention program, I was working with a clinical psychologist regarding prevention information and message apathy. We were finding that while most guys were getting HIV prevention training, they were apathetic to the message. One of the most surprising things we were noticing was an increased prevalence of self-loathing coming from the younger generations of gay males. While they were coming out at younger ages, and being accepted by a larger majority of their parents and peers, they actually had a lower sense of self-worth.
I’d really like to see a much larger study done about this, but sadly, it’s probably never going to happen. We lost most of our funding, so we had to ditch our small-scale study.
One interesting trend is the national target age-range for new HIV cases (at least in the US) shifting from a younger age of 18-35 to an older 30-45.
I was in Montreal in October. A couple of young attractive guys half my age wanted me to fuck them. Not only were they not willing to practice safe sex, they had contempt for the idea. That’s where we are today. I walked away, but I wish there was someway to make them care about themselves and their partners.
as a person who’s lived with the virus for 29 years, and with a t-cell count that just went up by a hundred, anybody who doesn’t have the virus really doesn’t know what it’s like to have it.
growing up thinking i was genetically gypped, i realize i was wrong.
people are still dying and i live.
the only thing i combat these days is survivor’s guilt.
the stigma stopped affecting me years ago, i caught it when they hadn’t even heard about it.
i think that when we wipe out the stigma, AIDS day might truly be something to celebrate.
be good.
eldon
i was infected 30 years ago too.
eldon, above, has it exactly right.
on another topic, brett – where are you with the canadian government falling? your friends to the south need your perspective on it.
cheers,
scott
No new posts for awhile. Hope all is well.