Every year, Uganda joins the rest of the world to commemorate the International candlelight memorial. The International theme for this year was "Many Lights for Human Rights". Uganda organized an awareness week where a number of activities including boda boda sensitization, football tournaments, media campaign, community dialogues, radio and television shows, blood donation, home/hospital visits, school visits, performance by music artists and printing of IEC materials among others.
The commemoration of this day was crowned with a major event on May 18th, 2010 at Busoga Square in Jinja under the slagon ‘Light up the HIV Response’.
The international candle light memorial is one of the oldest and largest grassroots mobilization campaigns for HIV&AIDS awareness in the world. Started in 1983, the Candlelight Memorial takes place every third Sunday in May to honor the lost and raise social consciousness about the disease. The Candlelight also provides opportunities for leadership development, policy advocacy, partnerships, and improvement of community mobilization skills.
In Uganda the first international candlelight memorial was observed in 1988. During that inaugural memorial, TASO, working with the government of Uganda played a key role and mobilized their support groups which mainly constituted people infected and those affected by AIDS at that time. Since then, Uganda has commemorated the international candlelight memorial as a pre-cursor to World AIDS Day, every year.
AIDS Information centre participated in activities that included HIV counseling and testing starting on 10th to 18th May 2010, and exhibiting on the commemoration day.
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