Sidaction 2024: 3.87 million euros in pledges

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: FIORA GARENZI / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 10:25 p.m., March 24, 2024

The Sidaction association received 3.87 million euros in pledges for the fight against AIDS during the 30th edition of its annual fundraising weekend, an amount similar to that collected last year. “30 years after the first Sidaction, the public responded to the calls for donations launched by the association and was sensitive to the current issues in the fight against AIDS,” said the organization in a press release on Sunday, noting a result (3,870,829 euros exactly) “in balance compared to 2023”. The association collected a little more than 3.9 million euros last year, a level close to 2022 but a little below the record reached in 2019 (4.5 million) and almost repeated in 2021.

200,000 people live with HIV in France

The collection, launched Friday with the support of 35 media partners, remains open until April 12 by telephone by calling 110 free of charge. And donations are possible all year round by internet, mail or SMS. The 30th edition was launched with the broadcast of a clip to which Mylène Farmer lent her voice, to music by Woodkid. Then an evening was broadcast on France 2, during which Line Renaud was surrounded by faithful like Jean Paul Gaultier and Muriel Robin.

As usual, the funds will be donated to research and care programs and to community programs providing care and assistance to people living with HIV, in France and internationally, according to Sidaction. “Research must continue, towards a vaccine and a treatment to definitively control the virus,” argues the association, co-founded in 1994 by Pierre Bergé and Line Renaud. And "there is still progress to be made for prevention, screening or access to treatments, even in France", declared to AFP, ahead of the event, the president of Sidaction, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi. “The road is not finished” and “we must not stop along the way,” urged this co-discoverer of the virus in the early 1980s and 2008 Nobel Prize winner in medicine.

>> READ ALSO -

 30 years of Sidaction: donations, objectives, headliners... Three questions about the event

In France, some 200,000 people live with HIV and 5,000 new HIV-positive cases were discovered in 2022. Ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 remains possible, UNAIDS estimated at the end of November in its annual report for World HIV Day. AIDS on December 1, but only if we give the means and recognition to those on the front line. Some 39 million people worldwide are living with HIV, but more than 9 million of them do not have access to life-saving, yet effective, treatments. Although the disease is now taking less of a toll, 630,000 people still died from AIDS-related illnesses in 2022.