40 Years – HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day

When

June 05, 2021    
All Day

Event Type

June 5, 2021 marks 40 years since a new public health threat first appeared in the United States. On June 5, 1981, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first reported cases of a rare lung infection called Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) among five young, previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles. At the same time, there were reports of a group of men in New York and California with an unusually aggressive cancer named Kaposi’s Sarcoma.

First dubbed Gay Cancer, then “Gay-Related Immune Deficiency” (GRID) and in 1983 as “Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome” (AIDS). In May 1986 is was officially called “human immunodeficiency virus) HIV.

HIV/AIDS. Today we know that HIV doesn’t discriminate, and it impacts people of all ages, races, sexual orientations and socio-economic backgrounds. The reason HIV-stigma is still stubbornly pervasive is due to homophobia.