The AIDS Education Global Information System (AEGiS) was conceived in the mid-1980s, as a global informational response to the global AIDS pandemic. This pandemic has spread more rapidly than any other disease in medical history, accounting for over 34.3 million infections, 18.8 million deaths, and the orphaning of 13.2 million children by the end of 1999.
The mission of AEGiS is two-fold. First, and foremost, is the humanitarian delivery of current information to those in need. For many persons living with HIV or AIDS, access to timely, correct information about treatment advances, drug interactions and other important issues relating to HIV infection and AIDS, can literally mean the difference between life and death. To accomplish the delivery of information, AEGiS uses both a web site and an email list server, the latter to reach those not having access to the World Wide Web.
Second, is to preserve for all eternity a complete and full documentation of how humanity, at the end of the 20th century, and into the next millennium, faced and dealt with what has been described as the worst pandemic since Biblical times in both dimension and scope. This secondary goal resulted in AEGiS being nominated by James Maytum of Valencia, Spain, to UNESCO's "Memory of the World Programme", in 1999.
AEGiS differs from other archives nominated in previous years to the UNESCO "Memory of the World Programme", in that it will not be complete until HIV/AIDS is eradicated from the face of the planet. By the end of 2000, the archive, as originally nominated, had grown to over 700,000 abstracts and/or full-text articles -- the AEGiS Millennium Collection.
HIV/AIDS continues to decimate enormous portions of the human species, an no cure is in sight. Because of this, AEGiS is committed to the continued archiving of information related to the pandemic.
AEGiS is unique in a number of ways:
- First, AEGiS is a library of current treatment information, changing daily as it keeps in step with medical and scientific advances.
- Second, it is a archive documenting the history of the pandemic.
- The initial archive -- the AEGiS Millennium Collection -- is the focus of this nomination. It is an anthology of humanities response to the AIDS pandemic at the end of the 20th century.
- A second archive, which will be submitted to UNESCO, sometime in the future, will provide 21st century coverage.
- A seamless interface will be provided that will allow cybernauts to search each archive individually or together, depending on the needs of the user.
- Finally, AEGiS is unique in that the entire accumulated knowledge base is totally searchable by any cybernaut from any location on the face of the planet.
Promising new treatments raise the hope that HIV-disease may become manageable. For the foreseeable future, however, our strongest weapon in the fight against HIV/AIDS is information — comprehensive, up-to-date, easily accessed and widely disseminated — that can be transformed into knowledge.
This is the ultimate mission — past, present, and future — of AEGiS.
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