This is Bokang Rakabaele. He lives in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is 8. That's him on the left this past May. He has AIDs, tuberculosis and pneumonia. (Time Magazine, Dec. 4, 2006)

The photo on the right is him today, just 6 mos later. What changed? He got medicine -- he takes antiretroviral drugs (ARV) twice a day for the treatment of HIV. Without treatment, nearly a third of HIV-positive infants die by their first birthday, and half die by age 2.

My nephew Luke is 7. I hadn't seen him in almost a year! The whole family (and my David) went to Tampa this year to spend the week on the beach together for Thanksgiving. When my sister-in-law Nancy asked him if he would remember what I looked like, he said, "Yes. Aunt Julia has same color hair as yours, mama. And a laptop."

I love my little Luke. He said grace for us before turkey. It went something like, "Bless us oh Lord, for this food, which we are about to deserve...."

Ha!

Makes you think, though. Does anyone deserve food? Or, better asked, doesn't everyone deserve food? On the last night there, Luke and my dad got to talking about Christmas. My dad was telling him that Santa knows who's been naughty and who's been nice....so, you have to be nice if you want gifts.

Luke was contemplative a moment. Then he asked, "Papa? How many times can you be naughty?"

I live in New York, so I don't get to hang out with the little ones all that much, but when I do, I cherish it. Luke is healthy and happy; naughty or nice, he's a good kid who deserves to be a kid.

So does this little boy in Africa. And this year he got it. He lives in Lesotho, home to one of several pediatric centers of excellence for AIDS. (Four have opened--in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi and Swaziland. Four more are in planning stages)

His Santa Clauses were:*

1)The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
-- allocated $63 million this year for the treatment of pediatric AIDS
2 The Clinton Foundation
-- negotiated a 50% reduction in the price of a key medication.
3)A handful of nonprofit organizations, corporations and faith-based groups began sending more doctors to the developing world to help plug some of the health-care gaps for children.

What happens next in Lesotho and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa depends a lot on how broadly these first efforts expand. All the ARVs in the world aren't going to help much if children and their families don't have enough food to build up their strength or clean water to keep from picking up infections. Tough as it has been to focus attention on children with AIDS, it has been harder for clinics to get and use a common antibiotic to prevent pneumonia and other ills in HIV-positive children who don't yet need ARVs. "One of the biggest obstacles in treating children has been having a consistent guardian," says Dr. Martha Sommers, head of clinical services at Embangweni Hospital, a church-run facility in rural Malawi. "Often the guardian is sick or dying, or the children are orphans and getting passed from one guardian to the next." (Time Magazine, Dec. 4, 2006)

I am very happy and proud to be part of a global push to help children get to be children. All children deserve to be children.

As the Time article so aptly concluded -- there will always be more to do, but at long last the work has begun.