Today, Guardian is featuring some bold and moving pictures from across the world commemorating World AIDS Day 2010.

Since Larry Elliott wrote his column entitled “Evil triumphs in a sick society” condemning what many viewed at the time draconian drug patent policies by pharmaceutical companies, we’ve seen some improvements in the area. Owing in large to the production of generic drugs antiretroviral drugs necessary for patients, the prices for these drugs have have plummeted; as well companies have adjusted pricing policies for different regions.

Yesterday, however, MSF released a 5-page report which discusses how “stagnation in donor funding, coupled with trade policies” are creating barriers that threaten the progress that has been made in treating HIV/AIDS worldwide. It is important today to remember that while any progress to be made with addressing HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, NTDs will require scientific and health innovations; political will remains the determining element in facilitating innovation and providing access to treatment to any person who needs it.

Today is international Towel Day, a day of tribute to the late Douglas Adams, the brilliant author of, among many works, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979). Despite passing away quite young, Douglas Adams has had an undeniable influence on popular culture. When I first read Hitchhiker’s Guide in my late teens, I felt as though I had finally been let in on a big universal joke. The sci-fi genre was one I was well-acquainted with, but this was something entirely different– it was the seriously funniest or the funniest serious work I’d ever read. I finished the rest of the series within the span of a few weeks that summer and keep going back to them to this very day for wisdom and insight that just can’t be found elsewhere.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Chapt. 3)

While Douglas Adams was indeed onto something, if I were to travel across time and space carrying only a towel, I’d only be comfortable with one which had the following printed on it:

*Source: Topotaco via Gizmodo

To Mr. Adams, faeries or not, I’d like to think you are enjoying the view of the garden from the restaurant.

April 25^th is a rather interesting and historically eventful day. Today is DNA Day, commemorating the 1953 publication of James D. Watson and Francis Crick’s article elucidating the structure of DNA. Today is also the 7th anniversary of the completion of the ambitious Human Genome Project, which while in itself a monumental accomplishment, will be instrumental to the next great leap in the biological sciences.

Global malaria endemicity via Global Malaria Partnership.

World Malaria Day, takes place today in recognition of malaria, a preventable infection that is endemic to 109 countries, leading to as many as 250 million infections each year and one million deaths each year. As with the Neglected Tropical Diseases, which also put two billion at risk, those who are most likely to die from malaria are already the most vulnerable in world, their condition exacerbated by the social and economic burden of these diseases. As I posted in @ntds earlier today “No man is an island… we global advocates must work together to eradicate HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria, and Neglected Tropical Diseases.” I am an advocate of the vast yet concentrated efforts used to eradicate smallpox, but at the same time, I believe that today, given the knowledge and tools available, we are capable of a much more contextualized response. In my view, given the interplay between these four diseases, tackling one without a comprehensive and coordinated strategy to tackle the others is akin to containing a leaking dam with a finger. It’s not going to be effective over the long term.

I love examining how great transformations occur, and I think in order to eradicate the the ‘Big Four’ infectious diseases that scourge our world, we need a great transformation in how we approach these infections, integrated strategies (as advocated by GNNTD) and revolutionary thinking.

Continue to part 2 »