please empty your brain below

Seeing parts of the Aids Memorial Quilt displayed really brings it home to you. Panels, each the size of a coffin, that have been worked by those left behind, have to depict, summarise and commemorate the life of a loved one in such a small space. Sadly, the Names Project exhibitions rarely come to the UK. I don't know why it doesn't seem to have caught on here.

Some statistics that I didn't appreciate until then (courtesy of www.aidsquilt.org):

21.8 million people worldwide have now died of AIDS.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 36.1M people now live with AIDS of whom 16.4M are women and 1.4M are children under 15.

During 2000 there were 3M deaths worldwide from AIDS. 1.3M of them women and 500,000 children.

The one thing that stays with me from the San Fransisco exhibition is just how many of the dead were health care workers.

As they say in America, "Go figure".


Wow, scary stuff man.










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