Today is World AIDS Day

It’s December 1st-World AIDS Day.

Here’s some facts about how the disease has affected the U.S.:

At the end of 2003, an estimated 1,039,000 to 1,185,000 persons in the United States were living with HIV/AIDS.

In 2006, 35,314 new cases of HIV/AIDS in adults, adolescents, and children were diagnosed in the 33 states with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting. CDC has developed a new and innovative system designed to estimate the number of new HIV infections (or incidence) for the United States in a given year. Using this new technology, CDC estimates that 56,300 new HIV infections occurred in the United States in 2006.

In 2006, almost three quarters of HIV/AIDS diagnoses among adolescents and adults were for males.

Although blacks, or African Americans, made up only 13% of the population in the 33 states, they accounted for almost half of the estimated number of HIV/AIDS diagnoses made during 2006.

In 2006, persons aged 25–34 and persons aged 35–44 accounted for the largest proportions of newly diagnosed HIV/ AIDS cases.

Check out the official World AIDS Day site for more facts from around the world.

AIDS was ... an illness in stages, a very long flight of steps that led assuredly to death, but whose every step represented a unique apprenticeship. It was a disease that gave death time to live and its victims time to die, time to discover time, and in the end to discover life.