1 World Tuberculosis Day March 24 th , 2011 I presented my confessions (below) to the International Childhood Tuberculosis Meeting (March 17 th -18 th , 2011 Stockholm), as a symbolic act directed to the entire Tuberculosis community. In this link of the European Centre for Disease Control you can see some news and documents about the meeting http://ecd c.europa.eu/en/heal thtopics/spotlight/spotligh t_tuberculosis_2011/Pa ges/inde x.aspxFor many who were present, this was an eye opener meeting, which focused on a neglected topic, inside a neglected disease: Tuberculosis among children. Some of my remarks in this meeting were: yThe Tuberculosis community can help the AIDS movement and not just the other way around. yThe womens movement, especially the networks of women living with HIV could be a strong voice against Tuberculosis among children, because often, it might be the HIV positives mothers, the ones who will transmit Tuberculosis to the children. Women are also the care givers of sick people, sometimes, including the fact that we are also fighting chronic infections like HIV. yThe Tuberculosis community can greatly benefit from the advocacy, action and involvement of faith communities; God gives the mandate to take care of the widow and the orphan. yFinally, I believe the Stop TB Partnership has to take advantage of the force of UN Women, together with other UN agencies like UNICEF, especially in much unspoken issues like Childhood Tuberculosis. In this document I confess the reasons why I became an advocate against Tuberculosis, but just recently and not 10 years ago when I was tested HIV positive. Someone asked me, why you had to confess , not being an advocate against Tuberculosis is not a sin?It is not a sin but, if one realizes something is unfair and continues to live ignoring it, there has to be some disconnection, between the message of social justice, the right to health and the ability to speak and act against a problem of my community. This is what I am repenting about:
