What scares me… and should scare you too

5.7 million: Estimated number of people living with HIV by the end of 2005 in India.
1.6 million: Estimated number of women [ages 15-49] living with HIV/AIDS by the end of 2005 in India.
Source: www.globalhealthreporting.org

The figures are scary. What makes it scarier is that we tend to look at such information as mere ‘figures’ – some data that will find its way into various reports and health presentations and stay there till we get an update on new ‘figures’.

What's scary is our tendency to think that it is something that can happen to everyone else but us. What's scary is that though most of us engage in it, we don’t want to talk about it. What's scary is that we tend to think of safe sex as an option. What's scary is our preconceived notions about contraceptives.

What's scary is that whatever little sterilized version of sex education our young people are getting is pathetically restricted to familiarization with sketched version of male and female reproductive organs. What's scary is that so many of our sexually active young people are at risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases mainly because we believe in being prudes.

What's scary that we love to find bliss in ignorance. What's scary is that our ignorance can cost so many lives. Isn't it’s high time we started sharing not just the figures but the life-saving facts too.

The following sites should be a good starter:
Heroes Project India

The Well Project

A Common Thread

Life is a common thread that binds us all. But why name a blog A Common Thread? Now, this calls for a little bit of story-telling.

Shared by Princess Quilt and Twisted Logic, this blog gets its name from a 1989 Oscar winning documentary film - Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt - that effectively portrayed the cries from the AIDS battlefield during the 1980s – a time when being an HIV+ was akin to having 'Plague' branded across your forehead, thanks to misinformed prejudices, lack of information and medical treatment. Having said that, it is not so much the idea of people succumbing to a killer disease but the idea of people fighting to live despite all odds that got our attention in the first place. And as our salute to those who kept on living despite the odds and in celebration of life, this blog has been named A Common Thread.


A LITTLE ABOUT 'STORIES FROM THE QUILT'
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt is an Oscar winning documentary dealing with the history of the AIDS phenomenon, reaching back to 1981 news reports that casually referred to the disease as “a new cancer appearing in gay men”. The documentary looks at the making of the AIDS Quilt – the amalgam of individual memorial quilts designed and sewn since 1987 by the loved ones of people who died of AIDS.

Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Common Threads takes its five personal profiles from the AIDS Memorial Quilt, started in 1987 by the Names Project in San Francisco to provide a positive means of expression for those whose lives are touched by the epidemic. The quilt is made up of 3-by-6-foot panels, each commemorating an AIDS death.

The following are the excerpts of the review carried by The New York Times in 1989:

“…The story recounts several years of official inaction that, even more so in retrospect, could be seen as bordering on criminal negligence. The villains range from Ronald Reagan and his assistant Gary Bauer to Eddie Murphy with his insensitive comedy routines about gays and AIDS. A national debate about AIDS finally got under way in the seventh year.
…The emotional core of this film, however, is the biographies. The lives of the already dead are reconstructed through photographs and reminiscences by loved ones. The living, several of whom have tested positive for antibodies to the AIDS virus, speak candidly, even graphically, about their experiences. Slowly, carefully, powerfully, Common Threads takes the cold statistics and gives them very recognizable faces.”