The deadly epidemic of HIV and AIDS has gripped the nation for decades now, but the medical community has made stunning turnarounds in the disease.
As today is World AIDS Day, it’s a fitting time to reflect on how far we’ve come in battling AIDS since it was discovered just 34 years ago and has since affected hundreds of millions of people, and continues to kill thousands each year in the United States alone, according to an ABC News report.
AIDS was discovered back in 1981, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study on five men who had gotten aggressive forms of pneumonia, killing two of them. Today, 36.9 million people are believed to have AIDS in the world, including 1.2 million in the U.S. It still carries a tremendous stigma, although perhaps not as much when the HIV panic was at its highest and it was known as the “gay plague.” Today, prominent individuals like Magic Johnson and other figures live with it.
And the fact that they are able to live with it is a testament to just how far the medical community has come in battling the disease. Although it killed 13,712 people in the United States in 2012, HIV drugs have made tremendous progress in just a short period of time, and the age-adjusted death rate for HIV has dropped an amazing 85 percent since peaking 1995. The death rate was sobering back then, close to 40 percent, but now it’s less than 5 percent.
New HIV infections have been declining as well since the mid 1990s, as has total deaths related to AIDS since the 2000s.
But there is still much work to be done. Advocates for AIDS sufferers call it the “silent epidemic” that continues to affect many millions of people. And they have pledged not to rest until there is a cure and the stigma is gone.
Here’s a statement from AIDS.gov on combating the “silent epidemic”:
OVERVIEW
Combating the Silent Epidemic of Viral Hepatitis
Building on the success of the nation’s first comprehensive cross-agency action plan, released in 2011, Combating the Silent Epidemic of Viral Hepatitis: Action Plan for the Prevention, Care, & Treatment of Viral Hepatitis, the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Justice (DOJ), and Veterans Affairs (VA) released a 3-year update of the plan in April 2014.
The updated Viral Hepatitis Action Plan builds on the foundation of and momentum generated by the original action plan and seeks to harness:
New recommendations for health care providers regarding screening for hepatitis C;
Promising new developments in treatments for hepatitis C;
Mounting public awareness of and concern about hepatitis B and hepatitis C; and
The expansion of access to viral hepatitis prevention, diagnosis, care, and treatment offered by the Affordable Care Act.
The updated Viral Hepatitis Action Plan details more than 150 actions to be undertaken between 2014 and 2016 by 20 federal agencies or offices from across four federal departments. Those actions are organized around six priority areas.
Hepatitis Action Plan
The updated Viral Hepatitis Action Plan underscores that its national goals cannot be achieved through federal action alone. Envisioning active involvement of and innovation by a broad mix of nonfederal stakeholders from various sectors, both public and private, the plan provides a framework and focus around which all key stakeholders can engage to strengthen the nation’s response to viral hepatitis and seeks to leverage opportunities to improve the coordination of viral hepatitis activities across all sectors.
Read the Action Plan for the Prevention, Care, & Treatment of Viral Hepatitis (2014-2016) (PDF 2MB).
Download a factsheet (PDF 714KB) about the updated Viral Hepatitis Action Plan.
Read the press statement about the updated plan.
GOALS
The updated Action Plan continues the pursuit of four overarching national goals to be achieved by 2020:
Increase in the proportion of persons who are aware of their hepatitis B virus infection, from 33% to 66%
Increase in the proportion of persons who are aware of their hepatitis C virus infection, from 45% to 66%
Reduce by 25% the number of new cases of HCV infection
Eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HBV
ACTION PLAN PRIORITY AREAS
Educate health care providers and communities to reduce health disparities
Improve testing, care, and treatment to prevent liver disease and cancer
Strengthen surveillance to detect viral hepatitis transmission and disease
Eliminate transmission of vaccine-preventable viral hepatitis
Reduce viral hepatitis caused by drug-use behaviors
Protect patients and workers from health-care associated viral hepatitis