World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day is held on 1 December each year and is an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV and to commemorate people who have died. World AIDS Day was the first ever global health day and the first one was held in 1988.

With an infection rate of around 1.6 to 1.8 percent, Ukraine has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection in Europe, and contributed nearly 21 percent of the newly reported HIV diagnoses in 2006 in the Europe and Eurasia region. Ukraine’s first case of HIV/AIDS was detected in 1987.

Annual HIV diagnoses in Ukraine have more than doubled since 2000. The spread of HIV has also increased in central, northern, and western regions, particularly in urban settings, where 78 percent of new cases registered in 2007 were among urban residents http://kirovogradwoa.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/world-aids-day/.

/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_AIDS_Day/

World AIDS Day was first conceived in August 1987 by James W. Bunn and Thomas Netter, two public information officers for the Global Programme on AIDS at the

World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Bunn and Netter took their idea to Dr. Jonathan Mann, Director of the Global Programme on AIDS (now known as UNAIDS). Dr. Mann liked the concept, approved it, and agreed with the recommendation that the first observance of World AIDS Day should be 1 December, 1988.

Bunn, a broadcast journalist on a leave-of-absence from his reporting duties at KPIX-TV in San Francisco, recommended the date of 1 December believing it would maximize coverage by western news media. Since 1988 was an election year in the U.S., Bunn suggested that media outlets would be weary of their post-election coverage and eager to find a fresh story to cover. Bunn and Netter determined that 1 December was long enough after the election and soon enough before the Christmas holidays that it was, in effect, a dead spot in the news calendar and thus perfect timing for World AIDS Day.