Awareness
February 7, 2025, is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Throughout the HIV/AIDS epidemic, black communities have faced inequitable barriers to preventative measures and care for the disease that continues to this day. The history of the virus is mired in inequities and inequalities, especially towards those in black and queer communities.
Beginning in the early 1980s the public was informed of a disease that would later become known as HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) and the most advanced stage of HIV, referred to as AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). Cases were initially documented by the Center for Disease Control in the United States showing a small group of gay men in Los Angeles who were described as having contracted a rare lung infection, in addition to other unusual infections. The disease was initially thought to be a gay cancer, leading the public to wrongly attribute the disease to only the gay community. As word of the disease travelled, many of the first patients to have contracted this new illness had already started dying.
By the mid-1980s it was discovered that women could also contract AIDS, in addition to passing it to their children, as case reports from around the world continued to document increasing infection rates across demographics. At this time in Africa, a heterosexual AIDS epidemic was underway, in addition to skyrocketing infection rates across the rest of the world. Thousands of people throughout the world who had contracted HIV would die of AIDS throughout the 1980s.
Due to the increasing mortality rates research was underway throughout the 1980s to better understand the virus and how to treat it. There were many misconceptions about the virus, in addition to many stigmas and discriminatory beliefs associated with HIV/AIDS. Although public health officials, politicians, researchers, and community organizations had started prioritizing and allocating more resources to the global crisis, it was not until 1987 that the first anti-retroviral drug, AZT, was developed.
Access to the drug AZT and other treatments was costly and the virus disproportionately affected marginalized and under-resourced communities, especially queer communities of colour and developing nations. By 1997, the UN estimated that approximately 30 million people around the world were living with HIV. This meant that approximately 1 in every 100 adults globally were living with HIV. Due to disproportionate resources, AIDS-related deaths in many Western countries decreased by the late 1990s, while at the same time, HIV was rapidly spreading throughout Asia, the Pacific, and Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa.
As a result of treatments and preventative measures being far less available in developing nations, by 2002 both infection rates and mortality rates skyrocketed culminating in HIV/AIDS being the leading global cause of death among people aged 15-59 years old. African communities were hit hardest with 28.5 million Africans living with HIV back in 2002 and only 35,000 of that population able to access HIV treatment.
With so many people impacted globally by the virus, research proliferated and led to new advancements. In 2012, the FDA of the United States approved Truvada used for PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), which allows those who do not have HIV but are at risk of contracting it, to take the drug to reduce their risk of contracting the virus. This, along with significant increases in testing, helped further reduce infection rates. First in more resourced countries and later in developing nations. Finally, by 2023 29.8 million people, out of 39 million people globally living with HIV, were taking retroviral drugs making their HIV levels undetectable and preventing the spread of the virus to their partners.
Although decreasing infection and mortality rates from HIV/AIDS are major milestones, black communities continue to disproportionately contract the virus. Many in the black community still face barriers to access for prevention and care.
Sources
https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/why-the-hiv-epidemic-is-not-over
https://www.catie.ca/a-history-of-hivaids
https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline
https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet
https://www.hiv.gov/federal-response/ending-the-hiv-epidemic/overview/ending-epidemic-timeline
