What impact do national or global "days" have on you?

None.

Sorry, I see where you are getting. But it provides no impact for me.

I think about impact and how to help with a certain cause more than just one day a year.
The “days” are only really significant to me if there is an event on that day.

If there is information easily available like a link then I would probably click on it. Like today I read about participating in local HIV vaccine trials. Otherwise they don’t have much effect on me.

Only if I am in a group or organization that is interested in a particular day do I think about the subject of the day really. I have so much involvement with local days, both formal and informal, such as ozone action days, garbage day, Drop Everything and Read Day, dialysis day, and many others, that I don’t have time or energy to pursue many other days. Actually, the only “national” day I am involved with is Earth Day. Our local version is Earth Day Bay Day, and a lot of what that day celebrates I do all year round.

Otherwise, I spend most of my time navigating the world of medicine as a user and a caregiver.

I loathe these days. I feel they have good intentions but make people feel like they are doing something important when they are probably effecting no change. There are exceptions, but now that everything has a day it just makes me roll my eyes.

None, unless a bit of irritation at some of them.

I think it’s important to know what’s going on around you, which includes what things (like AIDS or genocide or homophobia) are making a global impact. These global “days” may seem silly (as I’m seeing some people express above), but they do give you an excuse (if you’re an activist) or the opportunity (if you’re not involved in a cause) to get involved in something important, even if it’s just marginally.

There are usually events for all these global “days” at the university I’m attending. Tonight they’re having a World AIDS Day benefit concert/fair, and I’m planning to go and maybe buy some crafts or whatever to support AIDS research and treatment. I am by no means an HIV/AIDS activist, but I like to support those who do spend a lot of time trying to fight HIV/AIDS, because I think that AIDS is having a huge global impact – therefore in my mind it’s an important cause.

Today was Facebook orchestrated “Hug a Homo Day”

I participated :)

I like these days for awareness raising potential. I love the activities that go on in my community as they educate me on important global issues.

@faye: My sentiments exactly.

I donated to it at the church and I have a red AIDS ribbon my backpack. :)

But even if you don’t do anything about it, the days are meant to raise awareness and there are usually events for these days. And hopefully, you will contribute if you care enough about it.

@trumi “Hug a Homo Day”? lol. Do I get a hug? :\

@DominicX ::hug!::

@DominicX sure :)

Thanks for asking this question as World AIDS Day has thrown me into a tizzy this year. I have been working in the epidemic for over 20 years (the red ribbon has been around for about 19 of them). There are a lot of people who think about HIV/AIDS exactly once a year (which is probably better than not thinking about it at all), but it is extremely frustrating to deal with this for over 7500 days to everyone else’s 2 or 5 or 10.

When I have the name of a person who died of HIV disease whom I have worked with for each of those 7500 days, it is heart breaking and World AIDS Day angered me this year more than it has in several. Thanks for the opportunity to rant . . .

@Kayak8 I couldn’t agree more. Everyone is going to forget until it’s a popular topic again. I hate it.

@rangerr @Kayak8 I’m just curious; what do you guys propose as a solution? People have many other things to do in their lives; we can’t all be focused on the same thing all the time.

@DominicX I think know that it’s because I’ve lost a family member to it. It’s the same with child cancer, and that gets less attention than HIV/AIDS. I don’t have anything to propose, I’m just stating that it bothers me.

While HIV is a terrible disease, made worse by senseless prejudices and lack of education, there are many other diseases that kill people, and that kill them just as horribly. I am not trying to downgrade the importance of fighting HIV, but I do think there are so many good causes that if everyone tried to do something about every cause we would all burn out.

I have friends who are HIV positive, but I have only known one person who died from AIDS. Thus, what concerns me personally most directly are diabetes, kidney failure, and the problems people with mental illness face, because this is what I live with day in and day out. Yes HIV is preventable, but so are other diseases such as malaria, which is the number two leading cause of death in Africa, after HIV/AIDS.

It is great that there are people focused on fighting HIV and the prejudices that surround it. However, those who fight to cure cancer, muscular dystrophy, child abuse, malaria, tuberculosis, and all the other many and varied ills of mankind do work that is just as valuable. Yes, the leading cause of death in developing countries is HIV, but other illnesses kill almost as many people, as follows:

HIV/AIDS – 2 678 000

Lower respiratory infections – 2 643 000

Ischaemic heart disease – 2 484 000

Diarrhoeal diseases – 1 793 000

Cerebrovascular disease – 1 381 000

Childhood diseases – 1 217 000

Malaria – 1 103 000

Tuberculosis – 1 021 000

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – 748 000

Measles – 674 000

In developed countries the ranking is different, but there are still some diseases that kill far more people:

Ischaemic heart disease – 3 512 000

Cerebrovascular disease – 3 346 000

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – 1 829 000

Lower respiratory infections – 1 180 000

Trachea/bronchus/lung cancers – 938 000

Road traffic accidents – 669 000

Stomach cancer – 657 000

Hypertensive heart disease – 635 000

Tuberculosis – 571 000

Self-inflicted – 499 000

Source

I suspect time and effort given towards any of these problems would not be wasted. I am not advocating giving up on having a local, national or global day, but I do think that no one disease should be highlighted. All of them are bad, especially any that affect young people. So, while I don’t pay much attention to HIV/AIDS Day, I do pay attention to some of the other days.

@Darwin
@DominicX
The number of people in the US dying as a result of HIV infection has been drastically reduced by the semi-effective medications on the market today. As a result, the overall pool of individuals LIVING with HIV has grown exponentially. (The death rate used to be close to the infection rate, but that is no longer true). In the case of infectious disease, when the pool of individuals with the condition of interest increases, there is a corresponding increase in the number of individuals who are placed at risk for the condition of interest.

This is all against a tableau of more than a decade of abstinence-only education in schools and other strategies that were not based on science but were designed, instead, to appease the comfort levels of a few.

It used to break my heart to have 30 and 40 somethings come in to see me having just learned they tested positive. Now it is teens and 20 somethings. In addition, the first cohort of kids born with HIV (who survived) are now entering young adulthood and are trying to negotiate relationships and parenthood.

If you watch HIV from the sidelines, it looks like the same old story. If you get down in the weeds, you begin to notice alarming changes. More of the older clients are dying of heart disease and complications from diabetes as a side effect of their meds (so they may not count as AIDS deaths anymore). Individuals with HIV who lack support also comprise a portion of the “self-inflicted death” category. And, if you really get down in the weeds, you will see that HIV is one of the primary reasons for the increase in TB deaths.

HIV doesn’t have to be everyone’s passion. As stated correctly, there are plenty of miserable conditions to go around all of which need support. But when we no longer talk about HIV, the stigma surrounding it (particularly in communities of color) keeps people from getting tested, keeps people from using protection (It’ll never happen to me), and keeps people from seeking care.

I just feel sad because HIV is completely preventable (as are some of the other conditions on Darwin’s list). While HIV is just a virus, because it destroys the immune system, the study of HIV has generated amazing breakthroughs in cancer research (e.g., with Kaposi’s sarcoma a definitive link was drawn between a virus-HHV8-and cancer). This has had implications for EBV, HPV research, etc. The study of HIV has shed new light on a number of the conditions Darwin listed because when your immune system tanks, it is as though we have taken the “boy out of the bubble” and exposed him to our world thereby discovering all these pathogens we didn’t even know people could get.

In all honesty, if we put all our money into HIV/AIDS research and nothing else, we would learn enough to cure half the things on the list above (diarrheal diseases, cancers, respiratory infections, TB, heart disease, and a number of childhood conditions). I am also realistic enough to know that is not going to happen.

I also know we can’t address HIV without addressing racism, poverty, homelessness, mental illness etc because these are all the comorbid conditions that accompany HIV.

Everyone needs to pick THEIR important cause and remember that the people you are trying to help may also be at risk for or been infected/affected by HIV.

@Kayak8 Excellent post, though I disagree with your assertion regarding putting all of our research dollars into HIV research. HIV receives the largest chunk of NIAID money owing to a long history of HIV advocacy. While there may be similarities between some viruses, in general there are far too many differences between diseases to enumerate, and many like TB are severely underfunded.

AIDS/HIV is a very dear subject to me as I have a family member who contracted it (through a blood transfusion). She is fairly young, 29, and I feel for her dearly. It’s thrown us all. I don’t wear ribbons, shirts or join little causes on facebook. However, I proudly speak out against these things and participate in any way I can, here in my city. I understand some people’s gut reaction towards these awareness days, but I suspect those reactions change once you’ve been directly affected by such an epidemic.

It’s usually mentioned in the newspaper and reminds people of topics worth thinking about.