Celebrating World AIDS Day

>>> in recognition of world aids day , which is of course today, red ribbon tributes are being seen all over the world. and at least one could make the record books. in the streets of johannesburg, south africa , people tied together red t-shirts to try to make the world's longest aids ribbon. there it is right there, the blood red color of the ribbon meant to symbolize the human toll aids has brought upon humanity, especially, especially for people still fighting the disease on the african continent .

>> my name is constance. a lot of people call mecon any. i've had two children before, and i lost all three children to hiv .

>> my next guest is the ceo of red, popular worldwide campaign designed to raise awareness and money for those fighting aids. deborah dugan, great to have you with us on this saturday. the one thing that is key to connie's story, and we just heard a snippet of it there, and what has kept her alive is the availability of those drugs, which the red campaign has helped provide to people living with disease in subsaharan africa . given that aids is now treatable, does that hurt the effort to educate and warn people that it's still a threat?

>> no. i think it's got to be both. it's got to be prevention and treatment. and so awareness and money to the global fund is what red is about. red is an organization that tries to engage the private sector, big companies, major brands like starbucks, apple, converse, coca-cola in the fight against aids. and by doing that, we engage youth to really care about these issues.

>> cdc came out with the report this week. in that report it shows that hiv cases were up 72% a year, 72% a year in 2010 among young lgbt men, lesbian, guy, transgender men. 57% of which are african-american. how do we stop these increases?

>> it's really, really hard. but we can't, you know, sort of rest on our laurels because we don't see it as much in the united states and in europe. at red we're focused very much on women, because the majority of people now infected are women, six out of ten in subsaharan africa . so we're trying to do the goal of eliminating mother-child transition of hiv by 2015 . and could that be the first of an aids-free generation after 30 years of this plague on the planet, and 30 million people have died, and 34 million still infected.

>> what else is red doing today to get the point across, and also how folks can help out?

>> well, it's world aids day , and instead of rhetoric and reports and all of those things, which is really important for a transparency to monitor the efficiency of what is going on, you can take action. so we have the number one dance record in the world right now with red. it's electronic dance music , dance red, save lives with the most popular dj in the world, tiesto. so go out and buy from itunes, the record. go to join red.com and buy a lot of red this holiday season .

>> red ceo and activist deborah dugan. thank you so much. i do appreciate your time this saturday.

>> thank you.