Incidence of AIDS

AIDS epidemic officially began when United States Centres of Disease Control and Prevention first published news of five homosexual men living in Los Angeles area to be suffering from Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) on 5th of June, 1981. Soon several more cases of PCP and other opportunistic conditions like lymphadenopathy and Kaposi’s sarcoma were discovered in supposedly healthy men in different cities of the nation. The symptoms together soon came to be dubbed as GRID or “gay related immune deficiency” as it was primarily seen as a disease affecting homosexuals. It soon became clear that this deadly new disease was not limited to homosexual men and by August 1982, it came to be known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS.
This name too was bestowed by the CDC.

HIV virus has however been present long before 1980s. Oldest known case of this syndrome was that of David Carr, a 25 year old British Printer working with Royal Navy who came to Royal Infirmary of Manchester with puzzling symptoms like purplish lesions on the skin surface. After suffering from a wide range of problems like fatigue, rapid weight loss, shortness of breath, fever and nights sweats he died in August 1959. PCP was detected later during autopsy.

HIV 1 infection was also found in a man from Leopoldville, Belgian Congo as early as 1959. The virus was found in his blood sample. Second documented case was from biopsy of lymph node of a female from the same place in 1960. 1969 saw the death of Robert R, a fifteen year old African American male prostitute at St. Louis City Hospital due to Kaposi’s sarcoma, which is categorized as an AIDS defining condition. The virus was detected in his blood and tissues after his death.
A Norwegian sailor, his wife and their nine year old daughter died due to AIDS in 1976.

Since then millions of cases of HIV infection and AIDS related deaths have been recorded. 2009 statistics provided by UNAIDS estimated the death toll to be a staggering 25 million with total 60 million people being infected with the virus. AIDS was finally declared a pandemic and humanity
is currently engaged in a deadly war with the disease.