tonight, thank god it's them instead of you

These are the estimated figures of the 2007 AIDS epidemic update, released by the UN in november. Approximately 33.2 million people are living with HIV in the world today. 2.5 million were infected by the virus & 2.1 million people died of AIDS in 2007. Of the people living with HIV, 22.5 million live in sub-saharan Africa & 1.6 million of casualties related to AIDS were african. The numbers are so huge that it's sort of hard to grasp them. But the good news is that the epidemic seem to be stabilizing & the global HIV prevalence (the proportion of people living with the virus) appears to have levelled off.

I've had the idea for this embroidery in my mind for quite some time & now that it's done it feels a bit... small, in some way. The original idea was to cross stitch little human shaped figurines representing the numbers, but that was just to much work (I'm lazy). & in a way I felt that the harshness of the numbers sort of speak for them selves... Well, now it's done anyway & the plan is to make it into a pillow case.

Sorry for the crappy picture, the colours are infact much brighter blue & red than what you see here.