World AIDS Day, designated on 1 December every year since 1988, is an international day dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV infection and mourning those who have died of the disease. The Global Theme for 2021 is “End Inequalities. End AIDS. End Pandemics.”

Forty years since the first AIDS cases were reported, HIV still threatens the world. Today, the world is off track from delivering on the shared commitment to end AIDS by 2030, not because of a lack of knowledge or tools to beat AIDS, but because of structural inequalities that obstruct proven solutions to HIV prevention and treatment.

Economic, social, cultural, and legal inequalities must be ended as a matter of urgency if we are to end AIDS by 2030. In a bid to raise awareness and to commemorate World AIDS Day, we held a health talk with our key demographic, school leavers (12th Grade graduates), to highlight the important steps one must take to protect oneself, how to maintain a healthy immune system, and how to be part of the solution by ending stigmatization and discrimination. The health talk was given by one of our former volunteers under the DAPP program, Martin Banda, who is about to complete his journey in studying Nursing.