We've come a long way in the fight to tackle HIV in developing countries - UK aid is helping to prevent 500,000 new HIV infections by 2015 in women through a range of prevention programmes. But there's still the hurdle of reaching people who are marginalised from the services they need and most at risk of infection.
On World AIDS Day, new research conducted for the Global Monitoring Report 'Youth and Skills: Putting education to work' shows the importance of investing in life skills education in school to ensure children have the confidence and negotiating skills to say no to sex and negotiate condom use.
The latest Health Protection Agency (HPA) figures show there were an estimated 3,010 new diagnoses among gay men in 2011 - the highest annual figure since records began. Nearly a quarter of people with HIV (24%) remain unaware of their infection and the proportion of late diagnoses (indicating people have been infected for over five years) remains worryingly high at 47%.
In the early 1980s, 1,249 haemophiliacs were infected with HIV/AIDS - and only 316 survive today. Tragically, some families were decimated by the loss of several family members who received contaminated NHS treatment, including one family who lost three brothers and a daughter-in-law, all through AIDS. The mother of the three men later died of a heart attack.
If the bill is passed it's likely to lead to even more HIV infections in politically isolated populations, especially among men who have sex with men. They will be prevented from having access to essential public health information, such as how to protect themselves from HIV and how to access life saving treatment and support services that are stigma-free.
Have you ever been at risk of HIV? Most people think they haven't, and quite a few of you are wrong. In fact, around 25,000 of you in the UK are so wrong that you're walking around with HIV without knowing it. If you're one of those 25,000 (and let's face it, that's much better odds than winning the Lottery, which many of us hope to do) then you are risking your own health and life, and you may well be unwittingly putting others at risk too.
I realised that none of the issues I have in life have nothing to do with my HIV status. It's all the other normal stuff that affect each and everyone of us in everyday life and none of it could I attribute to a tiny virus thats in my blood. One that I have to live with for the rest of my life so I can let it destroy me or use it to my advantage and get on with my destiny in life.
We all like to believe that history is progress; that things get better, that we learn as we go on. Well, this World AIDS Day, we can see that it isn't always so. 25 years on from those huge tombstone ads saying "Don't Die Of Ignorance", some people are still dying in the UK because they don't get tested for HIV till it's too late. And people are still getting HIV through ignorance of their personal risk.