Home
GSK in focus
AIDS at 25: timeline of a pandemic

AIDS at 25: timeline of a pandemic

5 June 2006 marked 25 years since the first cases of AIDS were reported. But what does the future hold for people with HIV/AIDS?

The report in the New York Times was to have far more significance than anybody could have guessed: "Doctors in New York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer. Eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made."

Twenty-five years ago, it was a wake-up call, the dawn of an awareness about a disease that is now killing people by their millions and ravaging communities around the world.

The newspaper article had followed a notice from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of a few weeks before, on 5 June 1981, about an outbreak of pneumonia and rare cancer striking gay men. The CDC was to label the disease GRID, for Gay-Related Immune Deficiency.

The original CDC item, on page two of its weekly report on related deaths in the US, was noticed by relatively few people. With the New York Times' report, however, awareness of the disease grew rapidly.

Today, we know it is not exclusively a type of cancer or pneumonia and that it is not confined to gay men (and certainly not to those living only in New York and California). We also have a different name for it - AIDS, or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - and we have established the link between AIDS and HIV, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus that can lead to AIDS in infected individuals.

Here is a timeline that tracks the course of the pandemic.

Pre-1980s

Researchers today have identified a number of events before the "wake-up" of the 1980s:

There are differing views, but recent evidence suggests that a form of ape immunodeficiency virus jumped to humans who may have hunted chimpanzees in tropical Africa in the 1930s.
Scientists used stored blood samples to trace the first known case of AIDS to a man who died in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1959.
A genetic analysis of HIV in 2003 suggested it arrived in the US in the late 1960s and that it continued to spread undetected in the US and other countries during the 1970s.

1980s

By the end of 1981, the year of the first documented cases of AIDS, just over 120 people are known to have died from the unidentified disease.
Along with the pneumonia associated with the disease, doctors notice a prevalence of a rare type of skin cancer, Kaposi’s sarcoma.
Within a few months, the CDC predicts that the immune system disorder affecting gay men is because of an infection.
The term Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is established and the CDC says that as well as gay men, other groups at risk are injecting drug users, people of Haitian origin and haemophiliacs.
By the end of 1982, AIDS is detected on five continents.
In 1983, the virus responsible for AIDS is discovered by Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris and later by Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute in Washington. The discovery sparked debate over who was first, but the scientific community today gives this credit to Montagnier. The virus is later named the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
Cases of AIDS passed on by heterosexual intercourse are identified.
The first International AIDS Conference is held in Atlanta, US, in 1985.
In 1987, Burroughs Wellcome, one of GSK’s legacy companies, makes history when antiretroviral therapy first becomes available. The drug works by stopping HIV from replicating in cells.
In the same year, Diana, Princess of Wales affects the public perception of AIDS when she shook hands - without gloves - with people with AIDS.
By 1987, a total of 71,750 cases of AIDS are reported to the World Health Organization (WHO), which launches its Global Programme on AIDS and declares the first World AIDS Day on 1 December 1988.

1990s

The red ribbon is adopted as an international symbol of AIDS awareness in 1991.
In the following year the first two-drug combination therapies for HIV are introduced.
Also in 1992 GSK establishes Positive Action, the pharmaceutical industry’s first initiative to support communities affected by AIDS.
By the mid-1990s, one million cases of AIDS are reported to WHO.
Established in 1996, UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS is set up to focus the resources and efforts of 10 UN agencies targeting HIV and AIDS.
The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) is set up in 1996 to help speed the search for an HIV vaccine.
In 1996, HAART (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy), a combination of three antiretrovirals, offers longer AIDS-free survival for people with HIV.
In 1997 GSK makes great strides in offering antiretroviral therapy approved for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission at preferential prices in the developing world.
The first full-scale trial of a vaccine against HIV begins in 1998 in the US and in the following year estimates are made that 33 million people are infected with HIV and 14 million have died of AIDS worldwide.
In 1999, AIDS becomes the fourth biggest killer worldwide.
By the end of the decade, 90 per cent of all people infected with HIV live in the developing world.

2000-2006

In 2000, GSK becomes a member of the Accelerating Access Initiative, a new partnership between five R&D-based organisation and five UN agencies with the goal of improving treatment and care in developing countries.
In 2001, UNAIDS says there are estimated 21 million people worldwide have died of AIDS, including 17 million in sub-Saharan Africa. About 36 million more are infected with HIV and about 26 million of them live in Africa.
Also in 2001, GSK publishes its Facing the Challenge report that outlines the company’s commitment to tackling HIV/AIDS by offering its antiretroviral medicines at not-for-profit prices in sub-Saharan Africa and Least Developed Countries.
In 2002, the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) is established to fight three of the world’s most devastating diseases.
Five million people are newly infected with AIDS during 2003, the biggest number in a year to date. Three million die from AIDS in the same year.
By 2003, over 37% of the adult population of Botswana is infected with HIV.
On World AIDS Day 2003, the “3x5 Initiative” is set up to treat three million people living with HIV/AIDS by 2005. It represents an important step in providing universal access to AIDS treatment to all who need it.
By the end of 2005, 1.3 million people living with HIV/AIDS were treated with antiretroviral medicines in developing countries.
By 2006, sub-Saharan Africa is the worst-affected region of the world. Around 60 per cent of the world’s people living with HIV are in this region.
In its 2006 report, UNAIDS estimates that to date, around 65 million people worldwide have been infected with HIV and AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since 1981.
In the same report UNAIDS says that important progress has been made in funding and access to treatment, and in decreases in HIV prevalence among young people in some countries over the past five years.

Dr Gerald Friedland of the Yale University School of Medicine has worked in HIV clinical care and research since 1981, the year of the CDC and New York Times reports.

Reflecting on the past 25 years, Dr Friedland says: "Those of us who have witnessed the evolution of this pandemic - and the tens of thousands of us who have worked to combat it - can now begin to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. We will likely be living with HIV and AIDS for the rest of human history. Rather than a sprint to the finish, our response must be a long and sustained marathon. Key to this are the sustainability and durability of ongoing efforts and the passing of the baton to the next generation committed to the struggle."

We have now lived with HIV and AIDS for 25 years and the efforts that are being made to tackle this terrible disease are significant. But what does the future hold for a vaccine or cure? It’s too soon to know, but at least some experts are hopeful.

Bookmark this page with: