World AIDS Day observances set

South County residents taking part in World AIDS Day observances Thursday, Dec. 1, have two opportunities to get involved, said Peggy Rebol of Cottonwood.

An awareness march will step off at 4 p.m. at Planned Parenthood, 2935 Bechelli Lane, in Redding. For more information, call 351-7112.

A 7 p.m. candlelight service is also planned at First United Methodist Church, 1825 East St., also in Redding. For more information, call 242-5898.

“Observed worldwide on Dec. 1 since 1998, World AIDS Day is the time when millions of people come together to commemorate people who lost their lives to HIV (human immunodeficiency virus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or AIDS), applaud progress made in responding to the AIDS epidemic and recommit to ending it,” Rebol writes in a flyer promoting both events.

Both events have adopted the “Getting to Zero” theme selected by the World AIDS Campaign for this year’s World AIDS Day. The theme will be used until 2015 in hopes of achieving “zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths,” Rebol’s flyer states.

The World Health Organization considers HIV infection in humans to be pandemic. Complacency about the disease may play a key role in its increased risk, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

From its discovery in 1981 to 2006, AIDS killed more than 25 million people, the United Nations reports. HIV infects about 0.6 percent of the world’s population, according to the United Nations.

In 2009, AIDS claimed an estimated 1.8 million lives, down from a global peak of 2.1 million in 2004, states a U.N. report on the global AIDS epidemic.Approximately 260,000 children died of AIDS in 2009, the U.N. report finds.

A disproportionate number of AIDS deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, retarding economic growth and exacerbating the burden of poverty in the region, concludes the U.N. report.

An estimated 22.5 million people (68 percent of the global total) live with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that is also home to 90 percent of the world’s 16.6 million children left orphan by parents who contracted HIV, the U.N. report states.

Both events are jointly sponsored by the Shasta-Trinity-Tehama HIV Food Bank, First United Methodist Church, NorCal OUTreach Project, NorCal Pride, Planned Parenthood and the Shasta County Interfaith Forum.