Noticias
Noticias
Since 1988 around the world a celebration is held on December 1 as World AIDS Day, that has served to raise the awareness on the epidemic; honor those that have lost their lives to this virus, focus the attention on matters that are fundamental for the successful response, and inspire positive action to give a response on the HIV pandemic.
Each year, the World AIDS Campaign promotes the central topic of calling the attention to this topic. This year's topic is "Universal Access and Human Rights". To highlight the importance of human rights in the response to AIDS, the General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, has informed to the General Assembly of the UN that the reduction of essential information access on HIV, the tools of prevention, treatment and services are incompatible with their compromises with human rights. He highlighted the fact that when human rights are promoted to protect the people living with HIV and the members of other vulnerable groups, there are less infections, less demand of retroviral treatment, and less deaths.
In Paraguay, SOMOSGAY adds itself to the World Campaign, in its objective of calling the global attention on the rights of people living with HIV and the most vulnerable populations of this, being gay males one of the most vulnerable in our country.
In its intention to mobilize the support of protection of these rights with the intention to accomplish the universal access to prevention, treatment, attention and support and fight the stigma and discrimination, SOMOSGAY adds the support of the Vice-Ministry of Youth and the Information and Communication Secretary for the Development, of the Republic's Presidency.
This year, under the motto "Lights for the Rights", citizens are invited to attend this event with the lights on for human rights, decorating their houses with red lights, using a red ribbon during the week of December 1st or just using red in their profile pictures in social networks like orkut, facebook, twitter, etc.
In the week of November 29th to December 3rd, SOMOSGAY will be organizing as well a series of activities under this global campaign.
In line with the need to widen the reach of the national response of Paraguay to HIV, SOMOSGAY with the support of amfAR, the American Foundation for AIDS Research, will offer from December on free HIV testing services at the SOMOSGAY Community Center, aimed at the entire citizenry.
This service is part of the called "Revolution of the Prevention", an innovative strategy proposed by the UNAIDS, which aims to combine part of the previously considered strategies of treatment, making them more accessible to all people. The access to counseling and testing (the HIV test), are part of this strategy, and it is with this that SOMOSGAY expects to accomplish a real Revolution of Prevention of HIV in Paraguay.
