Today is world AIDS day. I can’t help but to hold a sense of sorrow on a day like today. It is heart breaking to see the personal– and social– devastation caused by AIDS … and especially in Africa.

Some comments from Bono…

This is the defining moral issue of our time. This generation will be remembered for three things: the Internet, the war on terror, and how we let an entire continent go up in flames while we stood around with watering cans. Or not. Let me share with you a conviction. God is on his knees to the church on this one. God Almighty is on his knees to us, begging us to turn around the supertanker of indifference on the subject AIDS. –Bono

And some recent news of how things are going.

Some quick facts on AIDS:

• Every Day 6,300 Africans die of HIV/AIDS and 8,500 more contract HIV or AIDS, including 1,400 newborns.
• Every 14 Seconds a child is orphaned to AIDS.
• 25,400,000 The number of people estimated to have died of AIDS in Africa as of the end of 2004
• More than 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa (nearly half the population) live on less than $1 a day.
• Sub-Saharan Africa has more than 10% of the world’s population, but is home to about 65% of all people living with HIV

For more AIDS and Africa facts, see gotcents.org.

Some other places of interest:

• The got cents campaign They are doing a prophetic event today in down town Menlo Park– putting all of the pennies they have collected on display.
• ONE campaign
• Data.org Debt AIDS Trade Africa