‍For the past couple of days, I have been glued to social media, to see what friends in the HIV and AIDS family are posting in the run-up to December 1, World AIDS Day.

We are given one day each year when the world focuses on our cause, our purpose and our lives. This year, the hashtag around which we’re rallying is #MyHealthMyRight.

It carries a unique meaning for each one of us. For some people that "right: is about access to treatment; for others it’s even more fundamental – testing and knowing your status. But HIV and AIDS touches more than just health. It affects gender, schooling and violence at home. For me, the biggest barrier to making AIDS history is still stigma and discrimination – two ills of society that prevent us from taking that critical step forward.

The world is a very different place than what it was in 1981, when the first confirmed cases of HIV were identified in the United States. Now, every region in the world is reporting a decrease in the numbers of new HIV infections – apart from Eastern Europe where, last year that number went up by 60 percent.

More than 160,000 people were diagnosed with HIV in 2016 in the European region. Something has gone desperately wrong. But, the history of AIDS has also taught us that nothing is impossible. Civil society demanded action from political leaders and, in doing so, created a people movement that has never stopped.

I was just in Moscow, where I saw Michel Sidibé, who for almost a decade has led UNAIDS, the United Nations' program for the disease. He likes to share words of wisdom, including proverbs from West Africa like this one: "A single tree cannot make a forest." I think that captures exactly where we stand now at the crossroads in the fight against HIV and AIDS, a single tree – or a single individual – cannot end this epidemic for good. But, as a compassionate collective, we can.

I have an underlying fear that the world has more or less forgotten us, and that all the excitement around treatments, and the results it has produced, has deceived many of us into thinking that AIDS is over. Clearly, it isn’t. This World AIDS Day is another opportunity for us to refocus our energy around some of the most marginalized people in society.

I just hope that we can do this every day, and not only once a year. People get infected all the time. People are still dying. And no one needs to. World AIDS Day may be December 1 – but in my book, it repeats itself every 24 hours.

There are good individuals everywhere. Those like Michel Sidibé, and also China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan who, many forget, began her own personal involvement at a time when very few public figures were willing to ally their names with people living with HIV.

Please join them – you don’t need to be called a "Goodwill Ambassador."

In spirit we all can be.