BANGKOK, July 9 (AFP) - Here are landmarks in the history of AIDS:
- 1981: Eight young homosexuals in New York are diagnosed with Kaposi's Sarcoma, a skin cancer that usually occurs in older people, while five Los Angeles gays fall sick with a rare form of pneumonia. Together, these clusters alert the US authorities to something new -- a disease that wrecks the immune system and exposes the body to opportunistic disease.
- 1982: (July) AIDS gets its name -- acquired immune deficiency system.
- 1983: (May) Scientists at France's Pasteur Institute, led by Luc Montagnier, isolate a virus that penetrates white-blood cells, causing AIDS. They call the agent lympadenopathy-associated virus, or LAV. In 1986, it becomes officially known as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
- 1987: The first anti-HIV drug, azidovudine (AZT) is approved after trials show it slows, but does not cure, the progress of the virus.
- 1991: Death of Freddy Mercury, lead singer with rock group Queen. US basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson announces he has HIV.
- 1994: Studies show AZT can dramatically cut mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
- 1995: Two new classes of anti-HIV drugs, also targeting replication, are approved -- protease inhibitors and non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors. Used in combination, they can reduce the viral load to below detectable levels, an achievement that triggers optimism that a cure has been found.
- 1996: The United Nations sets up the Joint UN Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS). The viral load test, a yardstick of disease progression, is introduced. The epidemic starts to worsen in Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union, India, China.
- 1997: Evidence emerges of toxic side-effects and resistance to the new antiretroviral drugs.
- 2000: Southern Africa becomes the epicentre of what is now a global pandemic. In Botswana, up to one in four adults and 40 percent of pregnant women have HIV.
- 2001: Indian drugs company Cipla vows to make cheap generics of AIDS medications, putting pressure on multinationals to cut prices further. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan calls for an AIDS "war chest" of between seven to 10 billion dollars per year, compared to the one billion currently being spent. AIDS becomes leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa.
- 2002: The Global Fund for Fighting AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria starts to make its first allocations. Fuzeon, the first in a new class of anti-HIV drugs called fusion inhibitors, is introduced.
- 2003: US President George W. Bush unveils plans to spend 15 billion dollars over five years to combat AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. The first HIV vaccine to undergo a full trial proves to be a flop. New WHO Director General Lee Jong-Wook calls for three million poor people to get access to antiretrovirals by the end of 2005. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao becomes the first premier of his country to publicly shake hands with an AIDS patients. The cost of antiretrovirals falls further.
- 2004: South Africa finally starts to provide free antiretrovirals in hospitals. The Group of Eight (G8) summit calls for a Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise that will beef up coordination and exchanges of information among the world's vaccine scientists. UNAIDS reports that 20 million have died from AIDS since 1981, and 38 million have HIV. It warns that 12 billion dollars will be need to fight the disease in poor countries in 2005, and 20 billion in 2007
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