Bill Clinton, with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), has teamed up with HP to help infants with HIV. Today is World AIDS Day. Yesterday, HP announced an initiative that would help these infants by building five data centers in Kenya. These data centers would be instrumental in speeding up diagnosis response times from several months to just a few days.
“Almost 10% of women in Kenya have HIV,” Gabi Zedlmayer, HP’s Vice President of its Office of Global Social Innovation, tells Fast Company, adding that that means 120,000 Kenyan infants are exposed to HIV annually either by contracting it from their mother or breastfeeding. Timely and appropriate medical attention is crucial for infants infected with HIV: “If they don’t get treatment in time,” says Zedlmayer, “half of HIV patients will not see their second birthday.”
HP’s goal is to reach 70,000 of the infants infected within the first year of the program. Foursquare is also working to help raise awareness today. They’ve teamed up with (RED) to help “turn the world red with awareness.” Today, your Foursquare check-ins can me much more than a mayorship.
This campaign is even more important because we’re so close: with current treatments, we can virtually eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV within five years, creating the world’s first AIDS free generation. When you shout #turnRED with your check-in and broadcast it to Twitter, it’ll turn your section of the (RED) map a bit more red (and you’ll earn a (RED) badge to help spread awareness further). Hopefully, all together, we can raise awareness for a healthier future.
via Foursquare Blog
Alicia Keys and a host of other celebs are also working to raise awareness today by not saying anything, at least online. As we previously reported, “celebrity social networkers such as Usher, Jennifer Hudson, Janelle Monae and Serena Williams will sign off of their social networking accounts until the charity raises $1 million. To express the gravity of the situation, many celebrities have joined an ad campaign where they’re being photographed in coffins.”