The AIDS Epidemic Is First Identified

Date

1981

Category

Social & demographic

Region

Global

Era

Contemporary

Significance

The AIDS epidemic was first recognised in 1981, marking the start of a global pandemic that would kill tens of millions. On 5 June 1981 the U.S.

Centers for Disease Control published a report describing a rare pneumonia, Pneumocystis carinii, in five previously healthy young gay men in Los Angeles, two of whom had already died. Within weeks doctors noted clusters of an unusual cancer, Kaposi's sarcoma, among gay men in New York, and physicians realised they were seeing a new syndrome that devastated the immune system. Named Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome in 1982, and traced to the HIV virus by 1983, the disease spread worldwide across sexual, blood-borne and mother-to-child routes, hitting sub-Saharan Africa hardest of all. Early years were marked by fear, stigma and government inaction, particularly toward affected gay and drug-using communities. AIDS reshaped public health, sexual behaviour, medicine and activism, and though antiretroviral therapy later made it survivable, more than 40 million people have died, making its identification one of the defining events of the era.

Empires active in 1981

• Soviet Union
  1922 CE – 1991 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Yugoslavia
  1918 CE – 1992 CE

Related social & demographic events

• The COVID-19 pandemic
  11 March 2020
• The #MeToo movement goes viral
  October 2017 onward
• George Floyd's murder and global Black Lives Matter protests
  May–June 2020
• The Great Leap Forward and the Great Chinese Famine
  1958–1962
• Rise of Solidarity in Poland
  August–September 1980 (movement to 1989)
• The Ethiopian Famine Shocks the World
  1983–1985

Further reading

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

The wider story

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

Global best-seller on how our species, its populations and societies remade the world.

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