History and Statistics
In 1981, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) documented an increasing number of extremely uncommon infections, Kaposi’s sarcoma and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, in New York and California.The infected persons were homosexual men who were not predisposed to these infections.The infections were then called GRID or gay-related immunodeficiency disease. A few months later, cases of the same infections were reported in Haitian immigrants and recipients of bloods transfusions, therefore completely debunking the idea that the infection existed only in homosexual men.
The following year, GRID was officially renamed as AIDS or Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome. Syndrome was appropriately used for the infection did not present itself in a single illness but in rather varied clinical and life-threatening diseases.
The earliest reported case of AIDS was of an English printer who suffered from a number of symptoms namely shortness of breath, skin lesions, weight loss, and high fever in the early 1950s. The printer died in 1959 and a sample of his tissue was preserved. Thirty years later, a test was performed and the tissues turned out positive for HIV. The same symptoms presented in a Haitian clerk who died within the same year.
- It was reported that roughly 450,000 people in the United States are infected with HIV, 77% of which are men.
- About 47% of all reported infections were acquired through male-to-male sex.
- Females comprise about 19% of all reported cases which already advanced to AIDS.
- 93% of the 10,000 children under 13 were infected through pregnancy transmission. Around the world, there are currently about 32 million people living with AIDS.
Here is the recent report of the surveys conducted across the world.The map shows the density of AIDS patients across the world.