The World AIDS Day was celebrated at Andejani Hall at King Abdulaziz Medical City in Jeddah in cooperation with the Saudi AIDS Society under the slogan “Getting to zero: Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS related deaths”. Around 250 people participated from various health sectors in the western region. A large number of doctors, nurses and health professionals from various health related sectors attended this event in addition to people living with HIV/AIDS.
The Infection Prevention & Control Program organized this event under the supervision of Dr. Abdulhakeem Al Thaqafi co-executive director of the program who commended the speed of discovering infected cases and dealing with them to ensure patients' rights and privacy as well as the speed in carrying out tests and following-up procedures in accordance with the Ministry of Health.
The events included a scientific symposium on the epidemiology of AIDS and the necessary precautions for prevention as well as the medications used in the treatment of patients.
The activities started with a lecture on the history of the disease and ways of transmission and prevention with emphasis on reducing the spread of the disease also they provided useful lectures about AIDS, including prevention and treatment from a public health perspective, HIV infection among children and pregnant women, medications and their complications, mental health of patients and the nutritional requirements for people living with HIV/AIDS as well as mentioning the work that the Saudi Society of AIDS does. At the end, they mentioned stories of people living with HIV/AIDS.
According to the United Nations statistics in 2010, over 33 million people were infected worldwide 50% of them were women while infections in 2011 reached nearly 2.7 million. Although the number of new infections decreased by 21% from 1997 to 2010, the average of HIV positive patients increased in some regions of the world such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where the rate increased by 250% during the period from 2001 to 2010 while in the Middle East and North Africa, HIV/AIDs the rate of the virus infections was up to 0.2 percent.
During the event, Dr. Al Thaqafi spoke of the efforts made by international organizations in fighting the disease including the World Health Organization’s initiatives such as the "the 3 by 5 initiative" which was a global TARGET to provide three million people living with HIV/AIDS in low- and middle-income countries with life-prolonging antiretroviral treatment (ART) by the end of 2005. He then spoke of the future world health strategy (2011 - 2015) which will be based on four main paths: promoting the prevention, diagnosis and treatment programs; strengthening the cooperation between related health programs; supporting and developing high health systems to ensure sustainability; and reducing barriers to grant health services to those affected.
The program also included the participation of a woman living with HIV/AIDS, who shared her experience with the disease and the challenges she faced so that the society can accept her.
There was also a competition with approximately 150 participants who wrote expressive sentences to support people with AIDS.