Amazing, right?

"That time has now come in our struggle to overcome AIDS," Zuma said. "Let us declare now, as we declared then, that we shall not submit."

According to the Christian Science Monitor, "Mr. Zuma's pledge marks a departure from the policies of his predecessor, President Thabo Mbeki, who disputed the scientific evidence linking HIV with AIDS, and who actively discouraged the rollout of antiretroviral treatments to help AIDS patients live longer, more productive lives."

This is a great step in the right direction, Thank you Mr. Zuma

• More than one out of every 10 South Africans, or 5.7 million of them, has been diagnosed with the virus, and more than 2.4 million children have been orphaned by the disease thus far.
• Researchers say HIV tends to strike those in their child-bearing years, the disease has had a powerful economic and social effect on families in South Africa, a country where nearly 40 percent of the population lives in poverty. When parents die, their children lose disciplinarians and role models. When breadwinners die, a society loses its most productive workers, and children are forced to live with grandmothers and extended families, many of whom are already struggling themselves to make ends meet.

"I think it is beginning to dawn on South Africa as a whole that the scale of the situation is so alarming, it's difficult to imagine how we are going to deal with it," says Ivor Chipkin, the chief research specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council in Tshwane. "By 2015, 32 percent of all young South Africans will have lost one or both of their parents to HIV. That is astonishing. The South African family is in deep crisis."

The policies of Thabo Mbeki, who disputed the link between sexual behavior and AIDS, together with antagonistic attitudes of his Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang – who urged HIV patients to eat garlic and beet roots, and to drink lemon juice to ward off the disease – contributed to an estimated 330,000 premature deaths, according to a Harvard University study. Some African National Congress party radicals have called for Mr. Mbeki to face charges of genocide for his HIV policies.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, "South Africa currently provides anti-retroviral (ARV) treatments to 700,000 HIV-positive patients, an increase of 216,000 from last year. Each ARV treatment costs roughly $1,500 per year. In the past, the US government and foreign donors helped South Africa to provide those ARV treatments free on demand, and today, the US ambassador to South Africa, Donald Gipps, announced that the US would pitch in an additional $120 million next year for AIDS treatment and research. But over time, the greater burden for providing treatment will fall on South Africa's shoulders."

The Big Question...Who will pay for it?

"I don't know how we're going to do it," says Mr. Chipkin. "We have to somehow scrape it all together, but what that means in terms of sacrifices, I can't say."

My Thoughts...

This is great progress for South Africa, but it is still in need for donations and support from other countries.
Please visit the national world aids day website, click here. You are able to donate to organizations and programs around the country so that people struggling with HIV/AIDs and families will be able to have access to resources and medicines that can make them better.

For more information on this article, click here.

World Aids Day 2009....We Remember....We Pray.....We Support