Take the Food for Life Network AIDS Marathon Challenge

When HIV/ AIDS was discovered in the 1980s, public health officials, medical professionals, religious leaders and politicians all begin to send a message around the world about the disease unofficially known as the "perfect virus." Instead of working tirelessly to find a cure, some policy and decision makers believed the best strategy to combat the disease was to socially chastise and isolate the perceived culprits of the epidemic: gays. The time wasted on such negative campaigns can be computed by the alarming number of lives we lost during that period. What we have learned since those early days is that HIV/ AIDS does not discriminate. The virus acts with absolute impunity and cuts a swath across gender, sexuality, socioeconomic, religious, cultural and geographic barriers.

It has been over 25 years since scientists first discovered HIV/ AIDS and despite the remarkable breakthroughs in science and technology as well as the advent of pharmaceuticals drugs that extend the life of those living with HIV/ AIDS, there is still no cure. Furthermore, recent statistics show that HIV/ AIDS is still a worldwide epidemic and that individuals continue to engage in risky behavior without taking any preventive precautions.

Recent statistics show that we are making progress but that we are not out of the woods. Indeed, we still have a long way to go to eradicate this deadly virus.

- In 2009, approximately 33.3 million people were living with HIV worldwide; an estimated 2.6 million people became newly infected.

-Sub-Sahara Africa is the most infected place on the planet, with an estimated 68% of its population living with HIV/AIDS.

-At the end of 2009, UNAIDS and the CDC estimated that over 1.1 million people in the United States were living with HIV/AIDS

-More than 50,000 HIV/AIDS cases are diagnosed in the U.S. each year.

-More than 5,000 HIV/AIDS cases are diagnosed in Florida alone every year. 

-In 2008, there were over 95,000 cases of persons living with HIV and over 47,000 cases of persons living with AIDS in Florida.

-Florida is the 3rd state with the highest number of HIV/AIDS cases in the U.S. (after New York and California).

-Broward County ranks 2nd in the number of HIV/AIDS cases in Florida (after Miami Dade County).

-In Miami-Dade, of the more than 45,000 infected, 48% are black while 30% are white and 20% are Hispanic/Latino

-Black, heterosexual females living in Miami-Dade represented 75% of the reported AIDS cases and 71% of the reported HIV cases in 2010. It is the leading cause of death for both black men and women between the ages of 25-44.

Join Food for Life Network AIDS Marathon and Food for Life Network, Inc. in our efforts to increase HIV/AIDS awareness by demanding more funding for AIDS research, community education and outreach programs at the state and national levels. We must target minority "hot spots" to reduce the alarming trend of infection. We further request that local and state officials provide tangible incentives for employers, organizations, groups and individuals who raise HIV/AIDS awareness by participating and sponsoring local events.

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