How Many Deaths Will It Take?
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the first report of what has come to be called AIDS. In early June, 1981, no one could have had such a horrible nightmare as the HIV/AIDS pandemic has become. Worldwide it has been devestating. No disease has ever done this much to so many across the globe.

But it is more than numbers. Numbers are beyond our comprehension. At least 6,000 people die every day in Africa. That's more people than lived in my small, northern Pennsylvania hometown when I was growing up. In five days it's more than the number of people living in my Twin Cities suburb. That's the whole Twin Cities Metro in 15 months. I can't grasp those numbers.

But I do personally know two people, two who were my two oldest friends from 9th grade on. One was gay, the other received a blood transfusion before there was a test available- or we even knew we had to have such a test of the blood supply. One died in 1989, the other in 1991. Very early in this disease's history.

Still today people are dying. We don't see it as much here in the United States. Like so many such things, they tend to get hidden unless it affects us, someone we know, or some famous person. That doesn't make it any less real. That doesn't make it any less devestating to the world. The economic impact on Africa, the need for intense medical resources, the human, personal cost of millions of orphans in Africa in less than healthy conditions- these continue.

No, AIDS may not happen to you, but you- and all of us are being affected, for as it is happening to even the least of our brothers and sisters, it is happening to us.