If you trace the sudden boom in attention, you'd encounter the start on the day Gibo Teodoro visited UP Manila for the Make Health Count Presidentiable series (spearheaded by the UPM USC).

In that forum, I was in charge of filtering the questions the audience can ask to the presidentiable. The event started late and just after a few questions, the Gibo staff were telling us we have time for one last question. Flustered with the number of questions flooding in, we had to choose the "last" question. It was narrowed down to two: smoking and HIV/AIDS. We chose HIV/AIDS. And apparently the one who asked the question was an advocate of the infection in the Philippines. And now we have this. Which is good. The NEC and DOH has actually been trying hard and failing to capture the mass and media's attention on the disease and they have the surveillance data to back it up.

How funny that I unintentionally played a role in HIV/AIDS advocacy in the country. This is  something to tell my grandchildren or students or whatever when I'm old and moldy.

In much sadder news, January 2010 had the highest number of news cases of HIV diagnosed ever in the Philippines. The NEC points to needle-sharing among IV-drug users.