U.S. outlines attack on AIDS
Hillary Clinton calls for ‘an Aids-free generation.’
WASHINGTON — In an ambitious road map for slashing the global spread of AIDS, the Obama administration says treating people sooner and more rapid expansion of other proven tools could help even the hardest-hit countries begin turning the tide of the epidemic in the next three to five years.
“An AIDS-free generation is not just a rallying cry — it is a goal that is within our reach,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who ordered the blueprint, said in the report.
“Make no mistake about it, HIV may well be with us into the future, but the disease that it causes need not be,” she said Thursday.
President Barack Obama echoed that promise.
“We stand at a tipping point in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and working together, we can realize our historic opportunity to bring that fight to an end,” Obama said in a proclamation to mark World AIDS Day on Saturday.
Some 34 million people worldwide are living with HIV, and despite a decline in new infections over the past decade, 2.5 million people were infected last year.
Given those staggering figures, what does an AIDS-free generation mean? That virtually no babies are born infected, young people have a much lower risk than today of becoming infected, and that people who already have HIV would receive life-saving treatment.
That last step is key: Treating people early in their infection, before they get sick, not only helps them survive but also dramatically cuts the chances that they’ll infect others. Yet only about 8 million HIV patients in developing countries are getting treatment.
Other important steps include: Treating more pregnant women, and keeping them on treatment after their babies are born; increasing male circumcision to lower men’s risk of heterosexual infection; increasing access to both male and female condoms; and more HIV testing. NEW YORK — A tourist’s snapshot of a New York City police officer giving new boots to a barefoot homeless man in Times Square has created an online sensation.
Jennifer Foster, of Florence, Ariz., was visiting New York with her boyfriend Nov. 14 when she came across the shoeless man asking for change in Times Square.
As she was about to approach him, she said, the officer — identified as Larry DePrimo — came up to the man with a pair of all-weather boots and thermal socks on the frigid night. She recorded his generosity on her cellphone.
It was posted Tuesday night to the NYPD’s official Facebook page and became an instant hit. More than 410,000 users “liked” it as of Thursday evening, and more than 100,000 shared it.
Thousands of people commented, including one person who praised him as “An officer AND a Gentleman.”
The photo shows the officer kneeling beside the man with the boots at his feet. A shoe store is seen in the background.
The NYPD Facebook page on Thursday posted a comment from DePrimo saying, “I didn’t think anything of it,” and updated it with a photo of DePrimo taken in 2011.
“I have these size 12 boots for you; they are allweather. Let’s put them on and take care of you,” Foster quoted DePrimo as saying to the homeless man.
She wrote: “The officer squatted down on the ground and proceeded to put socks and the new boots on this man. The officer expected NOTHING in return and did not know I was watching.”
“I was just doing my job,” DePrimo told reporters later Thursday.
When asked about spending his own money on the boots, DePrimo said, “You just don’t think about things like that.”
DePrimo is assigned to the Sixth Precinct, encompassing Greenwich Village and the West Village, and lives on Long Island.
He told Newsday that the homeless man “smiled from ear to ear” after getting the boots.
“It was like you gave him a million dollars,” he added.
He told The New York Times that he keeps the receipt for the boots in his vest to remind him “that sometimes people have it worse.”