Today is World AIDS day. Yes indeed it has become a virus that has been recognized by the world that it is impossible to completely eradicate. It has been around for a while; we all are either affected or infected. If not infected we are affected in that we have lost our loved ones, or we are nursing loved ones. If you have ever nursed a loved one, it is indeed a painful path to see your own blood go through agony slowly till death.

Maybe someone might say, why am I talking so negatively, no I am not, its time we talked about it openly, its time we broke the ice and openly spoke about the pain of being infected let alone the pain of being affected.

I have lost my two brothers to this dreaded virus. If graves had ears, they could hear regrets from many lying there. Regrets as to; if only I had kept the promise, if only I had done things differently, if only I had listened to my parents, if only I had remained faithful to my spouse.

If the dead were to open their eyes to see the tears rolling down the eyes of their children who remain to be orphans, tears and heartbreaks on the faces of their spouses they once promised to keep the promise; indeed those of us remaining to tell the story would live differently, would keep our promises, we would stop stigmatizing those infected for indeed they are part of us, they are us.

The solution to HIV is not in the condoms that ZRA abundantly provides, it is not in the ARV’s that science has and is so faithfully continuously developing, it is in keeping our promise to remain faithful to one partner, it is in keeping our promise to stop the spread of HIV. A doctor friend of mine once said the sex hormone has no conscience. You and i are custodians of this conscience if we are to stop the spread of the virus.

We all need to be leaders in fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic. It is not just the business of ZRA management; it is the business of all of us. My request and prayer for each of you and indeed for myself is that we grab the virus by its horns and keep the promise to one spouse, keep our religious promises of remaining faithful. This applies to whether you are infected of affected. Keeping the promise is the key to eradicating the virus completely. God bless