Imperial, UCL and King's AIDS HIV with Pub Crawl
Written by Tobi Issac Obisanya
Medsin Imperial have just finished running Positively Red Week 2011: ZERO. There were events every day of the week to engage, involve and mobilise students in the fight against AIDS. Monday marked the inter-university Central Line Pub Crawl, with students from King’s, UCL and Imperial battling it out to raise the most money for the Terrence Higgins Trust. Starting from the South Kensington campus and visiting 12 pubs along the Central line money was raised for HIV/AIDS. King’s and UCL students, preferring to be in a lecture theatre rather than affecting tangible change in the world, raised the grand total of £0. Impressive. Followed by a night out in Tiger Tiger with everyone coming on the Medsin guest list raising money for AIDS, the week started in style & somnolence.
On Wednesday, a debate entitled ‘Do we give too much AID to AIDS?’ took place in the Imperial Tanaka Business School. It saw Medsin Imperial’s patron Professor Alan Fenwick, an advocate for Neglected Tropical Diseases, argue the point that a disproportionate amount of global funding is given to AIDS against three experts in the field of HIV and infectious diseases. On Thursday World AIDS Day 2011, a projection of the red ribbon, which has become the symbol for AIDS awareness, was projected onto the iconic Queen’s Tower on the Imperial South Kensington campus. On Friday a special kind of auction was held in ICSMSU’s Reynolds bar, by friends auctioning off their particularly hot friends to be ‘slaves’ for the evening... Yes, you missed it. Finally, the week came to an end on Saturday with a smashing ‘Red Rave’ at Imperial’s new club, Metric. With many students debating and fundraising for AIDS over the course of the week this is just one of the ways in which we can contribute to the global struggle against HIV/AIDS.
Positively Red Week was organised all in the name of raising awareness for AIDS and to dispel common misconceptions such as: ‘Do people still have that thing?’, ‘I thought it was some disease that they discovered in the 1980’s because people were getting frisky with monkeys?’, ‘Is it that the disease you get when you’re gay?’
Unfortunately, HIV/AIDS is a very tangible ‘human’ disease present within all socio-economic groups, sexual orientations and ethnicities that causes a significant burden of disease within the developed, and most especially the developing world. Similarly unfortunate are that false ideas and prejudices about AIDS and those who suffer from it still exist. Eliminating this, along with getting to zero new infections and zero AIDS related deaths is the theme of this year’s World AIDS Campaign. With 2011 marking the 30th anniversary of the discovery of the AIDS virus, there could never be a more relevant time to discuss and raise awareness and money for these issues.
Since its discovery HIV has infected over 60 million people and 34 million people are estimated to live with the virus today, with 2.6 million new infections a year. In a recent press conference, Hillary Clinton, encouraged by the 96% efficacy shown by the newest ARV’s (Anti-Retroviral drugs), stated that we have an opportunity for the first time ever to create an ‘AIDS-free generation’. However, with the current economic climate and the pressures placed on governments to cut back spending on international aid paired with sentiments that AIDS is over funded (David Wilson, World Bank Global HIV/AIDS Program Director), there is doubt to whether or not this will ever become a reality.
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