Tomorrow (Dec. 1) is the 20th annual World AIDS Day, several health, advocacy, and research organizations are marking the event.

Several organizations, including The American Medical Student Association and the Global AIDS alliance, are staging a rally outside the White House to demand increased funding and reconfigured trade rules governing access to AIDS medicines to help combat the global epidemic. The rally caps a weeklong letter writing campaign.

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative is marking the day by encouraging increased attention on AIDS vaccine research. The organization recently sent our staff writer Kerry Grens a new documentary titled, "Against the clock: race for an AIDS vaccine," that originally aired on BBC. Grens wrote in our September issue about a since-failed study testing the efficacy of using common adenovirus vector to deliver an AIDS vaccine.

President George W. Bush even got in on the act during a speech in Maryland today when he urged Congress to pledge $30 billion over the next five years to fighting AIDS around the world.

Meanwhile, officials at the National Institutes of Health have presented three agency scientists with awards for their contributions to HIV/AIDS research.

In a press release announcing the awards, NIH director Elias Zerhouni says that they are intended to, "applaud the heroic efforts of researchers and clinical trial participants who have devoted their time and energy to helping us find effective ways to prevent HIV/AIDS and new treatments to help those already infected."

This year's winners are Kenneth Bridboard of NIH?s Fogarty International Center, and Daniel Douek and Richard Koup, both of the Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Bridboard is the director of the center's division of international training and research and has developed programs to build teams of international researchers and clinicians trained to combat AIDS in more than 100 nations around the world.

Douek and Koup were jointly awarded for their research on HIV pathogenesis and immune reconstitution. Their work helped to characterize the role of HIV-specific T cells in the control of HIV infection and to establish the immunological basis for AIDS vaccine development.