Monday, July 18, 2016
NYS Health Foundation President & CEO Wonders if NY Can End the AIDS Epidemic
In July 1981—35 years ago this month—The New York Times ran a now infamous headline: “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” The story also reported, “The cause of the outbreak is unknown, and there is as yet no evidence of contagion.”
It was the first news article about a mysterious new disease that came to be the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
No one knew the magnitude of what was coming. From 1981 to 2013, an estimated 1,194,039 people in the United States had been diagnosed with AIDS. Of those, 658,507 have died.
Today, more than 1.2 million people in the United States are living with HIV infection; it is estimated that almost 1 in 8 don’t know they are infected...