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The World rallies in the Time of AIDS
12/22/2006
By Beach Times Staff
It’s World AIDS day, throughout the world and here in Costa Rica. Throughout the world, December 1st is the day to remember AIDS.
It’s been around almost as long as the virus and originated in 1988 at a World Summit of Health Ministers on AIDS Prevention.
If it is true, Costa Rica’s HIV population is a dot on the map of the AIDS pandemic which encompasses 39 million infected people, the recurrent axiom is to not let down the guard.
In Tamarindo, Barracuda Art Gallery, will be observing Worlds AIDS Day by shrouding the gallery’s windows in black plastic and will post statistics of Costa Rican and world deaths due to AIDS.
Melissa Brenes, owner of Barracuda was inspired by New York-based group of art professionals, Visual Aids, who first observed World Aids Day on December 1, 1998 as a Day Without Art--a day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis.
“We humbly follow behind that of Visual Aids in order to focus attention on the losses and stimulate discussion about the role we as artists and all art institutions might play in the continuing AIDS crisis right here at home,” she explained.
Originally Day Without Art organizers suggested a black-out by shutting down museums and galleries, sending staff to volunteer at AIDS services, and covering up artwork with dark fabric. Since then, Day With(out) Art has grown into an international collaborative project.
Dr Guiselle Lucas, a consultant to the Ministry of Health, says that according to the United Nations’ AIDS Program, 0.2 per cent of the country’s population is infected with the virus.
“There are some 3,200 people diagnosed with AIDS,” she says. “But the United Nations Aids Program estimates show that the actual number of infected people (those who have the HIV virus, but have yet to develop full-blown AIDS) is more likely to be 12,000-18,000 people.”
If 3,200 seems like a small number when in the world last year 4.1 million people were newly infected, one just needs to look at the Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas y Censos or National Census Bureau’s figures to understand that no country is safe.
In 1985, one young man in his 20’s died of AIDS in Costa Rica. Last year, 125 people, including 18 women, died from complications arising from the AIDS virus.
Cinthia Chacon Aguilar, the coordinator for non-profit organizations which work with AIDS in Costa Rica, said recently the most documented cases of AIDS in the country appeared among people between the ages of 30 and 40. She emphasized that woman and teenagers between the ages of 15 and 24 are now the fastest growing high risk group in the country.
Dr Felicitas Barquero, Epidemiologist from the Health Ministry in Liberia has the province’s numbers.
“In Guanacaste, in 2005, there were 21 registered cases. That’s a percentage of 2.71 per cent of the total number of sexually transmitted diseases which stood at 775 cases,” she said, adding that two of those cases involved minors.
The gallery will also open its doors to the public on Saturday, December 2, at 7:00 pm with an exhibit by a collective of seven San José contemporary artists in the Galeria del Mar Commercial Center.
Proceeds from the event will go to CONASIDA (Consejo Nacional de Atención Integral de VIH/SIDA) and UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS).
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