Celebration of World AIDS fight day on 1st December

On 1st December 2020, the AIDS fight day was celebrated across the world. It was a day to show support to people living with and affected by HIV and to remember those who have died of AIDS.

This year, global attention was also focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and how pandemics affect people's lives. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how health is related to other critical situations, such as reducing inequality, human rights, gender equality, social protection and economic growth. Based on this idea, this year's theme for World AIDS Day was “Global Solidarity, Shared Responsibility”. It gave a possibility to reflect on how we sympathize with those people who need support: our families, people from our neighborhood, people from our work, from our school, from our community, from our city, our country, our planet ...

The high school students from Carolina Michaëlis school cluster in Portugal organized a presentation about AIDS and made short videos about this year's theme, to explore in the classroom with the secondary classes, during the week of 2nd to 4th December. They also made a large heart that was placed in the students' living room and the students were asked to put a red bows on the heart, reminding people who died and people living with this disease.

This way both the COVID-19 and and AIDS pandemic was discussed and given respect. The AIDS pandemic is also global and 40 years after it started, HIV continues to infect 1.7 million people each year and kills about 690,000.

Read about the event in Portuguese.