Jony Jerusalem is the online name of an AIDS activist in Israel. He lives in Jerusalem and has been an HIV carrier for the past five and a half years. After his experience of having a difficult time finding information regarding the HIV virus, Jony decided to create a website where people would find information and answers to their questions on AIDS.
He started the website israelpositive [1], and it has been running for the past couple of years. To supplement his efforts, Jony launched a new site on December 1, hivpals [2] – a social networking platform for HIV positive carriers.
In his most recent blog post [3] Jony describes his disappointment with the AIDS campaign in Israel:
This issue really hurts, especially when I see how much effort is placed worldwide towards AIDS day – amazing events, conferences raising public awareness and consciousness. All these on a grand scale. When I visited Berlin two weeks ago it was amazing to see that half of the advertisement signs in the city were geared towards AIDS day. In addition, the central city towers were set to be especially lit for this day. All the newspapers were filled with information on AIDS, part of a city-wide campaign in Berlin. I know many other places around the globe where cities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions towards AIDS awareness campaigns.
And for us, a mild, local dribble. At least from any of the formal entities.
Friends, here we needed to have heavy rain – a strong public campaign to raise awareness. A strong hail of messages. Yet we are satisfied with a local dribble. Too bad.