One thousand days might seem like a lifetime for your typical MTV viewer, living their life from day to day, but it's really not much more than the blink of an eye in the long and exacting struggle against HIV/AIDS.

Is there truly the political will, the communal will, and the global funding to really change the course of this epidemic to get to where we need to be? While HIV is still not curable, it is treatable and certainly preventable.

We are seeing a sea change on AIDS, a turning point in attitudes. Young people are not "the future," they are the here and now. And they're making smarter choices about their sexual health.

With a drop in the number of people dying of AIDS and new infections continuing to decline, we must not forget that HIV still has devastating consequences for millions of people across the globe.