Today is World Aids Day. It is a day to mourn the results of our lost battles against the scourge, but most importantly, it is a day to reflect, and garner fresh determination to launch renewed attacks against HIV/ Aids, taking into account how we have been doing it, and how to do it better.

The theme for this year’s December 1 is Leadership, and this is in cognizance of the fact that we need visionary leaders be they family leaders, political, religious or otherwise, to lead the fight against the pandemic. There has been steady progress made, as is seen in the many contributions by First Ladies and many others, who have taken the orphans and widows to their bosoms and made them feel less isolated or stigmatized.

There have been increasing contributions to the fight, like the PEPFAR programme and others, that have made it possible for hundreds of thousands of affected people to access drugs and other facilitation, that would have been otherwise impossible to access given the very prohibitive costs of such drugs and services.

In a world that is torn between celebrating plummeting prevalence rates according to some UN reports, and scare that we are losing the fight, the message should be clear: that we should depend only on ourselves to know that we are winning because we are following the straight and narrow road that keeps us out of the clutches of HIV.

Of course it is important to note we are also living in a world that is no respecter of whether one is living an ABC life; today innocent children are infected; innocent women have been raped and got infected; therefore the need to revise strategies of fighting, like the current circumcision campaign. Everything, but everything, must be thrown against the virus so that we come out the victors.

Ends