World Aids Awareness Day
HIV continues to affect the lives of many even today, physiologically as well as psychologically. Although medical interventions continue to work on finding the optimal cure or treatment for AIDS or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, most people who have tested HIV positive, tend to turn recluse and ostracise themselves from others, mostly because of the stigma attached to the disease.
Time and again, awareness programmes and medical associations assert that people should not give up hope and continue living their lives as others do, and one of the most prominent symbols used to convey the same is the red ribbon.
Today over 105,000 people living with HIV in the UK. Yet our recent research found 63% of the public does not remember seeing or hearing about HIV in the past six months. Only a third said they have sympathy for people living with HIV regardless of how they acquired it.
Our survey also found 1 in 5 think people think you can acquire HIV through kissing. Only 16% knew if someone is on effective treatment, they can’t pass HIV on and can expect to live a long and healthy life.
World AIDS Day is the perfect time for us to raise much-needed awareness about HIV.
We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to end the HIV epidemic for good, but we must also continue fighting the stigma still experienced by people living with HIV. Your support can help us realise our vision of a future where HIV is no barrier to health or equality.
25 years of the Red Ribbon Project and its significance
The Red Ribbon Project was created in the year 1991, by the New York-based Visual Aids Artists Caucus, and the image was made copyrights-free. The year 2016 marks the 25th year of the symbol, made with the purpose of generating consciousness and compassion among people who tested HIV positive and who are suffering from AIDS, and also among their loved ones supporting them.
The Red Ribbon Project is known to be inspired by the yellow-coloured ribbons that were used to pay respect to the soldiers who fought in the Gulf War. The makers chose the colour red because it best represents compassion and love, and was associated the most with blood.
The loop shape of the ribbon was chosen because of its simplicity — anybody could make a loop from a small piece of red ribbon and pin it on themselves.
Jeremy John Irons is known to have worn the ribbon for the first time in public while hosting the Tony Awards held in 1991. Thereafter, the symbol came to be increasingly associated internationally with HIV and AIDS awareness.
