But more lives can be saved and the infection rate reduced if treatment start earlier according to the World Health Organisation WHO.

Compared to the total number of HIV-infected. assumed to be at least 33 million, the 5.2 million is far from enough. But it is 12 times as many as in 2003, when WHO launched a special effort against HIV. In 2008 there were 4 million infected in ARV treatment.

WHO now recommends that treatment is started even before the immune system is weakened and HIV develops into AIDS.

” An earlier treatment allows people to live healthier and longer with HIV,” said Dr. Gottfried Hirnschall, Head of WHO’s program on HIV / AIDS.

According to WHO, it would be possible to reduce AIDS mortality by 20 percent between 2010 and 2015 if these guidelines for early intervention is implemented.

Early treatment will also make it possible to prevent many infections, including tuberculosis (TB), which is the leading cause of deaths among people living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA).

According to WHO deaths from TB can be reduced by as much as 90 percent if people with both HIV and TB gets treatment earlier.

‘In addition to saving lives, the earlier treatment also helps in terms of prevention. The treatment reduces the level of virus in the organism, and this means that HIV-positive people are less likely to infect their partners with the virus.

WHO guidelines will expand the number of people who should be on ARVs from 10 to 15 million.

The AIDS epidemic was discovered in 1980/81. In the first 14 to 15 years there was no effective treatment and an AIDS diagnosis was basically equal to a death sentence.

The big breakthrough in the fight against HIV and AIDS came with the introduction of combination therapies (ARVs) in the mid-1990s. Several different drugs used simultaneously were found to have a good effect.

The change was so great that AIDS in large parts of the western world was transformed from a deadly disease to a life-long infection.

But the HIV treatment is expensive and it requires both money and a relatively well-organized health system to establish and maintain lifelong treatments against HIV and AIDS.

It is still my hope that one day ARVs will be available to everyone who needs it.

He stressed, however, that it remains important to continue the fight and prioritize efforts. If the international community chooses to spend less money on the fight against AIDS, there is “a risk that we have reversed the progress of a recession,” said Ban Ki-moon as a comment to that one result of the global financial crisis is that some governments now choose to spend less money on the fight against AIDS than ever before.

But you don’t have to look out into the world to see that there is less money spent on combating the spread of HIV and AIDS. We can just look at Denmark and the capital Copenhagen which has already budgeted less money in this area.

Copenhagen Municipality health and care Committee has decided to entirely abandon the continued support for counseling for HIV-infected and their families (400,000 DKK in 2010) from 2011 – an advisory work performed HIV-Denmark.

This decision is completely counteracting a study from 2009 which shows that Denmark and Copenhagen in particular has had particular success in preventing a massive increase in the number of newly infected due to the personal counseling of the people potentially infected with HIV.

However, it is said that the politicians in Copenhagen in 2011 will continue to support distribution of free condoms. But seriously, I work within the field of HIV/AIDS and I have never noticed free distribution of condoms in Copenhagen and even if they exists it is the personal counseling of HIV that causes us/reminds us to use a condom.

I urge the politicians in Copenhagen to eradicate its decision on HIV-Danmark’s 2011 counseling work. The health of our people is a stake. Do you care?

The UN estimates that 2.7 million people became infected with HIV in 2008. This corresponds to 225,000 every month – or nearly 7,400 new infections every day or just over five every minute.

Worldwide 33.4 million people are infected with HIV. That’s why I still work in this field!

Retirement planning is like making a life insurance. It should be viewed as nothing more than a small plaster on the wound if worst case scenario should happen and you become physically incapable of working and need a reservoir of capital to survive.

Timothy Ferriss makes a strong case for this in his book “The 4-Hour Workweek” and I must say that his arguments are hard to beat. Here goes:

Retirement as a goal or final redemption is flawed for at least three solid reasons:

1. It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter – nothing can justify that sacrifice.

2. Most people will never be able to retire and maintain even a hot dogs-for-dinner standard of living. Even one million is chump change in a world where traditional retirement could span 30 years and inflation lowers your purchasing power 2-4 % per year. The math doesn’t work. The golden years become lower-midlle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending.

3. If the math does work, it means that you are one ambitious, hardworking machine. If that’s the case, guess what? One week into retirement, you’ll be so damn bored that you’ll want to stick bicycle spokes in your eyes. You’ll probably opt to look for a new job or start another company. Kinda defeats the purpose of waiting, doesn’t it?

“Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you!

This is the reason why I have chosen to spend all of my 20s and half of my 30s travelling. This has always been my dream – to see the whole world. So by now I have lived most of my dreams and have travelled more than 50 countries in the world. I don’t dare to postpone.
And I don’t take life or “tomorrow” for granted. I don’t take for granted that I will be old or even live until I am 50. And should I be so blessed to have 70 years to experience the world, I can’t take for granted that I can even walk by the time I “retire” and so how can I travel the world if I am not physically well? There are no garantees in life and certainly not on time. I am not a pessimist – I am realist.

I will never say that I will travel when I get retired – because by then I have seen it all. For sure!

This video gives you an idea about the yoga teacher training course I did with Chaitanya Nitai Das at Yoga Inbound in Cuzco. I really loved the training and can truly say that yoga has had a life changing effect on me.

In this video you will see parts of the lessons – yoga philosophy and training and Chaitanya will tell you about his training and the idea behind Yoga Inbound and finally I will tell you why I enjoyed it so much.

For more information about Yoga Inbound in Cuzco – please visit the website: http://yogacusco.com/

SLOW DANCE

Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?

Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Do you run through each day
On the fly?

When you ask “How are you?”
Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed

With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?

You’d better slow down
Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Ever told your child,
We’ll do it tomorrow?

And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die

Cause you never had time
To call and say “Hi”?

You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.
The music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift….

Thrown away.
Life is not a race.

Do take it slower
Hear the music

Before the song is over.

As a vegetarian it is not seldom that I hear the comment “ohh so you are a vegetarian, but you do eat fish right?”. No, of course I don’t eat fish. A fish is NOT a vegetable and I am against all killing and suffering of animals – so of course I can’t accept it for fish either. I have never understood how anyone could call them-self a vegetarian but still eat fish?!? Perhaps they don’t recognise (or want to realise) that fish injure just as much pain as other animals when they are caught and slaughtered.

Like other animals, fish feel pain and experiences fear. According to Donald Bloom, who is the animal welfare advisor to the British government, the nerve system in a fish is almost the same as in birds and mammals. This means that when they are dragged from the depths of the ocean, the fish undergo a terrible decompression – the fast pressure change ruptures their swim bladders, pops out their eyes, and pushes their stomachs through their mouths. Then they are thrown onto the ship, where they slowly suffocate, are crushed to death or are still alive when their throats and bellies are cut open. Does that sound like a nice death to you…one that you can just oversee so that you can eat sushi and still call yourself a vegetarian (or just eat fish for that matter)???

Overfishing is also a problem for the commercial fishing industry. Having basically emptied out the sea for “desired” fish, they now raise fish in fish farms. This practise is known as “aquaculture” and uses either cages in the ocean or tanks on land. There are so many fish in one cage/tank that they can hardly swim and bump into each other and the walls of the enclosure all the time. This results in painful sores and damage to their fins. The huge amount of feces in the tanks also lead to outbreaks of parasites and disease (besides the environmental damage of the surrounding area). In order to keep the fish alive in such an unhealthy environment, large quantities of antibiotics and other chemicals are poured into the water. When the fish have reached the desired size, they are brutally killed by having their stomachs cut open or they die of suffocation when the water in the tank is simply drained away.

Bon appetite!

NB: This article is a tribute to my wonderful sister Gitte, who has always been a strict vegetarian. Happy birthday Gitte.

fruits, food

When it comes to vegetarianism, the number one question on most meat-eaters’ minds is, “What do you eat?” I have often met meat-eaters who says “so you just salad?”. No, I eat everything. There are vegetarian alternatives to almost any animal food, from soy sausages and “Fib Ribs” to Tofurky jerky and mock lobster (if you so desire).

There are also great alternatives to dairy products such as soy ice cream, soy chocolate milk, Tofutti cream cheese, and more.

Becoming a vegetarian today is certainly a lot easier than 17 years ago when I became a vegetarian. Seriously, in Denmark we had hardly any veggie products. We had one kind of (not delicious) canned sausages and some paté. That was it. I am glad I did it out of love for animals and not for health reasons because it would have made it harder to keep.

Today it is so easy to become and be a vegetarian and there is a lot of help and inspiration to find. The American animal organisation PETA is doing fantastic work to promote vegetarianism. They have a website called www.goveg.com which has all the information you need about becoming a vegetarian including: the issues at stake, meet the animals, recipes, literature, famous vegetarians and the most amazing part: A FREE vegetarian starter kit.

It’s a great vegetarian starter kit with information and recipes and they send it to your home address for no cost at all. I have already ordered it for my sisters and my mum and it is really nice.

You can order the free vegetarian starter kit on the following link: http://www.goveg.com/order.asp?c=pfvskvp09

Good luck!

The health benefits of a vegetarian diet are well-documented, as are the increased risks of heart disease and cancer that come with eating meat. But these are “merely” personal benefits, and personal risks. Most people will say that this is a personal “lifestyle” choice. Yes, I agree. What you do with your body – is certainly your choice.

However, the decision to eat meat or not to eat meat is actually broader than personal lifestyle. With the advent of factory farming, other factors have to be considered.Modern meat production is a completely automated, mechanised industry with billions of animals spending their entire lives – 24 hours a day, seven days a week – in tiny pens or cages, never seeing the sun, never feeling fresh air, never being allowed the freedom to walk even one step. By eating meat you not only decide on a lifestyle for yourself – you decide the cruel life of these animals.

How many of us can remain complacent in the face of such institutionalised cruelty?

Did you know, for example, that 70 % of the grain grown in the United States is used to feed animals destined for slaughter? Or that 80% of the water used in the States goes toward animal agriculture? Or that land growing potatoes, rice and other vegetables can support 20 times as many people as land producing grain-fed beef? Or that many leading scientists now rank the environmental damage caused by the meat producing industry as second only to that caused by fossil fuels?

By eating meat you not only decide on a lifestyle for yourself – your decision influences the environment, global hunger and the cruel life of these animals. Don’t be cruel – be a vegetarian!

Then I found this pool:

Known as Centro Natacion M 86 the centre was especially built for Madrid’s World Swimming Championships in 1986. It offers some of the best facilities available in Europe, including seven swimming-pools in total (three indoor and four open-air).

I think the pool in the photo is probably the best swimming pool I have ever been to in terms of swimming lengths, and I end up there most mornings as a start to my working day… In fact, I’m heading there in about half an hour

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