Pick up the phone. Make the call.

Sometimes I do some digging around to find stories to post, other times the stories come to me. This one was in my inbox this morning:

HIV/AIDS is a global emergency. In developing countries, where effective antiretroviral drug treatments are financially out of reach, it can kill with alarming speed. Around the world, there were 2.1 million deaths from AIDS related complications in 2007. The suffering is compounded by malaria, which causes a child in Africa to die every 30 seconds from a mosquito bite, and tuberculosis, which preys on those already weakened by AIDS.

An emergency this serious requires an all-out response. Since 2004, ours has been PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief. PEPFAR is saving lives and a vote to re-authorize for another five years it is about to happen in the House of Representatives.

The email was from a wonderful organization called One.org. Through this organization, "we" can stand as "one" to end poverty, hunger, and disease in the world. As Americans we bitch and moan about the price of gas and the mortgage crisis, and we forget how really lucky we are to live where we do. I think we have an obligation to the citizens of the planet who didn't happen to be born into our prosperous circumstances.

Okay, enough preachiness. Just contact your Representative and tell them to re-authorize PEPFAR. You can find out more about the re-authorization of PEPFAR here. PEPFAR works:

In 2004, only 400,000 people were receiving life-saving antiretroviral drug treatment around the world. By September 2007, 1.45 million patients, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, were getting the medicine they needed through PEPFAR-supported programs.

World AIDS Day: December 1, 2007

Tomorrow is the international World AIDS Day. It is estimated that 33.2 million people around the world (that's one in every 200) are living with HIV. Every day, 6,800 people are infected with HIV and 5,700 people die of AIDS-related illnesses.

The theme for World AIDS Day 2007 is "Stop AIDS. Keep the promise." Organizations around the world are calling on leaders to show some leadership to stop this epidemic. According to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “This is not the time for complacency nor apathy. It is the time for compassionate leadership.”

There are thousands of events planned around the world marking World AIDS Day. The World AIDS Campaign is stressing the urgency of new and renewed leadership commitments by all stakeholders in the response to HIV and AIDS.

The World AIDS Campaign has straightforward information about the AIDS epidemic, and suggestions for how you can get involved.

I encourage you to read World AIDS Day 2007: Electing to Fight Against HIV/AIDS, by Susan Blumenthal, MD. She has written much more eloquently than I ever could on the importance of keeping this issue in the public debate. As she states:

... of the seventeen declared Presidential candidates, only a few have detailed their plans to combat HIV/AIDS in the United States and worldwide. When nearly 25% of Americans infected with HIV are unaware that they are infected, when nearly two-thirds (63%) think domestic spending on HIV/AIDS is inadequate, and when nearly one-third believe that the U.S. is losing ground in the battle against HIV/AIDS,²⁰ it is critical that the Presidential candidates share with the American public their proposals to fight this pandemic that threatens the health, economy and national security of our country and world.

Coffee-flavored condoms: Coming to a Starbucks near you?

Here's “thinking outside of the box” all right! From The Guardian:

Doctors have long argued about the health effects of coffee, but its reputation seems likely to receive a boost thanks to a flavoured condom that aims to encourage safer sex in Ethiopia.

Around 300,000 of the coffee condoms were sold in a week when they were launched in September, according to the US charity DKT International.

It hopes to tap into Ethiopia's coffee mania as a means to tackle high rates of HIV in the country, which is said to have invented the drink.

I think this is brilliant. AIDS is a growing problem is Africa; in Ethiopia, 2.1% of citizens are infected, and in the capital of Addis Ababa the infection rate is more than 7%.

With more than a millions Americans infected with HIV/AIDS, should we be giggling at efforts such as this, or encouraging them here at home? Even Jenna Bush admits that abstinence programs don't work.

Your Vote Counts

Part of my struggle with this blog is the effort to keep a balance. I want to discuss what I think are vitally important current topics, while still maintaining a sense of humor. (Thanks, Vicki, for your kind words!) I promise to try to keep that balance. Without humor, where would we be? (Yes, Mean Dave, I'll try not to mistake sarcasm for humor!)

This post is exciting to me because I know there are a lot of lurkers out there , and I have the opportunity to spread the word about an easy — really easy! — way that you can make your voice (and vote) count on the issues of world poverty and disease.

The ONE Campaign is launching ONE Vote ’08, an unprecedented bi-partisan high-tech, high energy campaign to mobilize voters and engage U.S. presidential candidates to make the fight against global poverty and disease a key foreign policy and security issue at the 2008 ballot box.

You can take action in many ways, and get informed before the ’08 election. Take one minute today, and add your one voice to the fight against global AIDS and extreme poverty. I did. And so have over 2 million other folks, one by one. Please join us.