Dear Madams and Sirs, dear friends of Club Alpbach Medica!

Like in every other year at World Aids Day I wanted to provide facts and figures concerning HIV/AIDS and Inform about Club Alpbach Medica‘s engagement like

• HIV/AIDS-Clubbing in Alpbach 2009 where again 1000,- EUR could be raised and donated to www.aidslife.at or
• Joining the Int. Aids-Kongress in Vienna in July 2010 www.aids2010.org with more than 25.000 participants.

But facts & figures tend to be free of meaning. We easily lose the relation to people’s daily life and humanity when we deal with figures … Today I received a short message in the morning which crossed my again fact-giving-plan: Somebody I once I had a very vivid and interesting talk with a whole evening, a talk that had an impact on my life, died of AIDS.

• Was he a close friend of mine? No.
• Did we work together? No.
• Was he a good or bad person? I dont’ know.
• Did he belong to the world-wide high risk-group? No as he was not female, not hetero-sexual, not originally from Africa or South-East/Central-Europe.

So, what made this person that special, that the message of his death made me feel sad the whole day and unexpectedly even tears ran down my cheaks after I received the message this morning? He was the first person I personally got to know who was infected with HIV.
He was also the first person I got to know to die from AIDS – two weeks ago in Florida.

It was him who made me curious what it really means to be infected with HIV, what life is about with HIV, etc.

It was him who drew my attention to this kind of infection and disease and inspired me to engage myself in events and use my contacts, networks, free-time to make a difference and a statement no matter in which field I was working – hospital management, politics and medicine.

Did he ever get to know that he had this impact on my life? No, because after this talk we never met again. Did he benefit in florida from the statment I tried to make? No.

No crises, no trauma, no life-changing event motivated me but a vivid, funny, intelligent person I talked to and had a „positive“ impression. Today I lighted a candle for this young man – about 30 years of age - an while writing this spot-on this candle is still burning. Today I would like to dedicate this very personal spot-on to him and thank him for his inspiration. May he rest in peace.

Lucia Uscnik