Miscellaneous

    As the old man walked the beach at dawn, he noticed a young woman ahead of him picking up starfish and flinging them into sea. Finally catching up with the youth, he asked her why she was doing this. The answer was that the stranded starfish would die if left to the morning sun.

    "But the beach goes on for miles and there are millions of starfish," countered the old man. "How can your effort make any difference?"

    The young woman looked at the starfish in her hand and threw it to safety in the waves. " It makes a difference to this one ," she said.

                                                                                (adapted from The Unexpected Universe by Loren Eiseley. Copyright 1969, Harcourt Brace,  New York)

    A friend of a dying AIDS patient who was in the hospital with pneumocystic pneumonia went to visit him. As he was living, his dying friend said,"  Thank you for coming-thank you for touching me. " He said ,"I can't even imagine being at a point in my life that I would be so grateful for someone touching me, that I would have to say thank you."

World AIDS Day (WAD) = 1st December 1998

A particle of HIV measured 1,000 angstroms (Å). It would take 254,000 HIV laid side by side to equal 1 inch (2.5cm) in length.

FDA guideline in purchasing condoms from vending machine:

• made of latex / polyurethane ?
• labeled for disease prevention ?
• spermicide (nonoxynol-9 or N-9) if any outdated ?
• machine exposed to extreme temperature / direct sunlight?
  • Stored 25ºC. Packaging must be impermeable to sunlight and gas. Ozone is like rust to condom.

This is a picture of a beaded South-African red ribbon badge. The red ribbon became an international  symbol  of AIDS awareness during 1991. The organisation Visual AIDS in New York, together with Broadway Cares, and Equity Fights AIDS, established the wearing of a Red Ribbon as something that signified support for people living with HIV/AIDS. The red ribbon started as a "grass roots" effort, and as a result, there is no official red ribbon, and many people make their own. To make your own ribbons, get some ordinary red ribbon, about 1.5 cm's wide and cut it into strips about 15 cm's long. Then fold at the top into an inverted "V" shape and put a safety pin through the centre, which you use to attach the ribbon to your clothing.