By the peak of the epidemic, 476,000 Americans had been diagnosed with Aids and more than half of them had died. Ellie, who lives with HIV, says it's incredible how far we've come, but 'it really does still feel like we have a long way to go with stigma.'
four years ago.
‘I do find the history of HIV quite upsetting to think about,’ she says. ‘It’s bittersweet to know how effective and accessible medication is now and to think of the people we’ve unfortunately lost. On July 3, 1981, New Yorkers reading The New York Times might have glimpsed an article beside a Fourth of July-themed ad for a bank.,’ the headline read. ‘Outbreak Occurs Among Men in New York and California – Eight Died Inside Two Years.’
Doctors were taken aback by this – how did five healthy men develop a lung infection usually seen only in people with severely weakened immune systems?, around 80 million and killed at least half that number. That year, the UK saw one of its first deaths of the epidemic, a gay man called Terry Higgins whose partner would go on to set up the sexual health charity the Terrence Higgins Trust .
Back in Britain, then health secretary Norman Fowler launched a blunt and unsettling public health campaign in 1986: ‘Aids: Don’t Die of Ignorance.’