World AIDS Day, and (Red)emption - Week 6

Today is World AIDS Day.

I must admit, I've been sweating this post for a few days now. After all, we're in the middle of our (Red)emption project. We've got a lot of new friends dropping by the blog for that reason, so this had better be good.

In the end, I decided that there's nothing I can say that can add to what has already been said so well by so any others. So, what I'm going to do is leave you with a couple of items that have arrived in my inbox the past couple of days, and with a pertinent scripture verse. Then, I'll give you the latest update on (Red)emption.

First, I received this from the Stephen Lewis Foundation yesterday:

We’ve come to another World AIDS Day, and for the first time it’s possible to say that the pandemic is finally being confronted in Africa. And that’s quite wonderful.

But the attempt to subdue the pandemic is, predictably and appropriately, focused on treatment. This still leaves a vast and continuing human toll: grandmothers desperate for food; orphans desperate to go to school; infected women desperate for the nutritional supplements that will allow the drugs to work on ravaged bodies.

And that’s where the Foundation comes in. We remain single-mindedly focused on the grassroots; on helping at community level where people live and die.

That’s why we so urgently ask for your continued support, and thank you for all that you have done.

What a wonderful message! And, those who are familiar with our (Red)emption project will know that it is the Stephen Lewis Foundation who will be the recipient of all funds raised. This note only makes me feel even more positive about that decision.

Then today, I read of further good news, which paradoxically offers further conformation of the need for the "single-minded" focus of the Foundation.

November 30, 2006
Clinton’s Foundation Brokers AIDS Deal
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS

MUMBAI, Nov. 30 — The cost of treating children infected with H.I.V. and AIDS is poised to plummet next year, under a deal announced today between two Indian drugmakers and former President Bill Clinton’s foundation.

Cipla and Ranbaxy Laboratories agreed to make 19 different anti-retroviral drugs designed for children available to 62 developing countries at an average price of $60 a year, which is less than half of the lowest current price, the Clinton Foundation said in a statement. Because not everyone has access to the lowest current price, the plan will actually translate into a four- to six-fold cost reduction for many children, said Stephen Lewis, the United Nations special envoy for H.I.V. and AIDS in Africa.

Many current AIDS drugs are made only in dosages and formats appropriate for adults, but the new drugs will be made specifically for easy administration to children.

“Whatever else happens,” Mr. Clinton said by telephone this evening from Chennai, where he flew after announcing the program in New Delhi, “we’re going to be able to save hundreds of thousands — and, in the next few years, millions — of lives of young people, because there’s a funding source to get them medicine, there’s an affordable price, and the medicine itself is a 3-in-1 pill that will be far easier to take and stay on.”

Read the rest of this article here.

Finally, here's a word from the Book of James, in the New Testament, which speaks to my own motivations.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
James 1:27

I won't get preachy, but this is why I am here, purely and simply.

And now... (Red)emption - Week 6!

Number of donors:
401

Countries Represented:

1. Canada
2. United States
3. South Africa
4. England
5. Scotland
6. Sweden
7. Australia
8. Wales
9. Chile

Number of Blogs linking to (Red)emption (that we're aware of):
77

Robert and I have been discussing when to bring this project to a close. You'll know our goal is 1000 participants, but we've decided that we will close (Red)emption at midnight, December 31. That gives us one month to see how far we can take this thing.

With that, let me leave you with a challenge. If you haven't contributed to (Red)emption yet, World AIDS Day seems like an appropriate day to do it. If you have, please continue to pass the word along. If you've sent an email to your friends, perhaps today would be a good day for a reminder. (We've found from experience that many will participate when reminded.)

Thank you. Together we can do this. Together we are doing this.

We are the people we've been waiting for.

Comments

[sonja]

Hi Mike ...

I've put up a post about World AIDS Day and re-focussed on (RED)emption as well ... it's here

[jocelyn]

Me too!
World AIDS Day 2006

[Wes]

...you're amazing, Mr. Todd! Could not be more thankful for, nor proud of you!!!