UNAIDS

When I was asked to do a paper on my hero, my first thought was of a person who directly saves others. Then I thought deeper and realized that some people indirectly save others lives. After realizing this, I thought of the AIDS epidemic in Africa and remembered how people all over the world are raising money and putting in time towards the devastation. All of those people are helping to save people, not by putting on a cape and rescuing from danger, but giving a little piece of themselves to others.

The AIDS epidemic caught my attention because it is definitely a current problem that has been somewhat ignored. Many people know of it, but are doing little to help prevent it. The people that do help, I consider them heroes. They didn’t forget, and they won’t stop remembering that lives are being lost everyday. With a problem as big as AIDS, it takes a large amount of people involved to actually get somewhere as far as preventing and treating it.

I personally think that this situation is completely devastating. I feel that the issue is close to my heart, because of the fact that I don’t know what it’s like to live in an area where you’re lucky just to get one meal a day. I don’t know what it’s like to be orphaned as an infant because my parents both died from AIDS. I realize that I could never understand quite what everyone in Africa is going through, but I know I want to do my best to reach out to those suffering. I want them to know that there are people out there that are willing to work hard to get them the lives that they deserve.

Are you aware that just in the past year, AIDS has taken over 1.5 million lives in the regions of Africa? Did you know that more than 11 million children have been orphaned from AIDS in that same year? Whether you’ve heard these facts before or not, it’s still just as hard-hitting and heartbreaking. Even with an increase in prevention and treatments, the number of deaths seems to be climbing as well.

Not only are African countries hurting physically as far as health, but this epidemic is quickly destroying many other aspects of their society. They are greatly affected in education, transport, human resources, industry and agriculture. Not to mention, the overall financial situations for the affected countries are never any good. Lives are being lost and the tragedy shows no sign of ceasing.

This is why everyone who helps with this cause is making a huge impact. The only hope of tackling this disaster, is through hard-working, kind people who volunteer their time and money to help out. A perfect example of this is an organization called UNAIDS. It is a group of people concerned about the problem of AIDS and are willing to take the action needed. They raise money and help to provide human, technical, and financial resources in response to the epidemic. They help to decide how to use donated money wisely, and how to prevent AIDS from spreading any more than it already has. The UNAIDS program has a set of actions, commitments, and goals to help stop HIV/AIDS. The work of this association has done so much for the cause and will continue to help with support, prevention and treatment.

I could only wish to be as powerful and as committed as a member of the UNAIDS program. But even though I’m not old enough to join, I can still do my part in what I think is a major problem being ignored. I can send money towards the cause and even help raise awareness. Just because I’m not an adult, doesn’t mean that I can’t do little things to help make the one big problem a little bit smaller.