Health : AIDSVu
It was June 15th, 1981 almost 30 years ago, that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the first known cases of what would eventually be called AIDS.
There have been many breakthroughs in the battle to fight HIV/AIDS, such as the use of antiretroviral therapy for treatment (and now for prevention), that have made HIV a ‘manageable’ disease.
But the news is not all good. There are still more than 50,000 people being infected with HIV each year in the United States and there are more than 1.1 million Americans living with HIV. HIV is still a big deal.
In an effort to visualize the current HIV epidemic in the United States, The Rollins Schools of Pubic Health at Emory University launched AISvu, which is an interactive map that provides a detailed view of the number of people living with HIV.
Not all states and counties are represented and the data is based on reports from 2008, but the map clearly shows the wide distribution of HIV.
Additionally, the data shows diagnosed rates and cases so the numbers are slightly deflated as an estimated one in five HIV positive people are undiagnosed.
The AIDSvu map will be updated as new data becomes available.
Stephan
The date that you gave does not seem right; I thought it was in 1980 that the first cases were reported. Is this an official date that the first cases were known or is it the official date that a name was given to the disease, that we now know as AIDS, by the CDC?
Thank you for your comment Bigem, that date is the date that the CDC sent out an Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) regarding an outbreak of Pneumocystis Pneumonia in Los Angeles.
Pneumocystis Pneumonia is almost exclusively limited to severely immunosuppressed patients, so the outbreak was considered unusual and of great concern.
The link to the MMWR is here(http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/june_5.htm). It was drafted on June 5, 1981 and widely disseminated shortly there after.
It’s pretty telling when the article above about “man-smells” gets hundreds of comments yet this only gets, as I post, two.
Thanks for continuing to stigmatize and mistreat your fellow men, readers.
What angers me is the fact that is has become a big no no to talk about the unpleasant side of living with HIV/AIDS.
No one wants to talk about safer sex and how it saves lives. Look here on the blogs so many people talking about how easy it is to live with HIV / AIDS. They go on and on about how great the meds are and show deep anger towards
those who disagree with thier misguided views.
Safer sex needs to be talked about, the high risk sexual behaviours many people practice needs to be talked about, and the fact that there are Gay people who willingly get infected with HIV / AIDS needs to be talked about.