2001 marks the 20-year anniversary of the first reported AIDS case.1

The United Nations General Assembly on the AIDS epidemic unanimously declares AIDS a global catastrophe.2

HRSA PUBLISHES LANDMARK TREATMENT GUIDE FOR HIV+ WOMEN

A Guide to the Clinical Care of Women With HIV/AIDS, published by HRSA in 2001, is now the primary textbook on the treatment of women with HIV the world over. It was the first manual written specifically on the medical treatment of women with HIV. In the year the guide was published, HIV infection in the U.S. was the fifth leading cause of death among women between the ages of 25 and 44 years old.*

The guide is a compilation by 13 authors and edited by Dr. Jean R. Anderson of Johns Hopkins University. It is periodically updated to reflect the latest information in the field.

“This manual responds to clinicians in HRSA-supported community health centers who asked us for better information on caring for the increasing number of women they saw with HIV,” said Dr. Elizabeth M. Duke, acting administrator of HRSA at the time the manual was published and HRSA administrator since 2002.

The epidemic among women has been mirrored in other key HRSA responses, even before the Ryan White CARE Act was enacted. Pediatric AIDS Service Demonstration projects, first funded in 1988, laid the groundwork for the Women, Infants, Children, Youth and their Families Program. There have also been a large number of meetings, seminars, and trainings devoted to women and HIV.

Despite just a handful of diagnoses among women in the early years of the epidemic, by the late 1980s new infections were growing faster among women than men. Initially, the disease spread among women predominantly through intravenous drug use; but by 1994, heterosexual contact had become the most common transmission category for women.