25th annual World AIDS Day commemorated

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Sunday brought the 25th commemoration of World AIDS Day, an event meant to boost awareness of the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. UNAIDS, a United Nations program, estimates 1.6 million people died from AIDS-related illnesses in 2012.

Baltimore, where the Washington Monument was illuminated in red to mark World AIDS Day, is consistently ranked as having one of the nation’s top 10 urban HIV infection rates.

Baltimore’s Washington Monument glows red for World AIDS Day
By Colin Campbell, The Baltimore Sun
December 1, 2013

A small service and a moment of silence under a glowing-red Washington Monument commemorated World AIDS Day in Mount Vernon Sunday evening.

The Rev. Joseph Muth of St. Matthew Catholic Church on Loch Raven Boulevard told the roughly two dozen gathered in Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church before the monument lighting that the city’s goal is to “get to zero.”

“When we were in school, zero was a failure,” Muth said. “Now we’re in a different school.”

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