HHS HealthBeat (July 8, 2011)

Thirty years of AIDS

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

It’s been 30 years since the first published medical report on the disease we now know as HIV/AIDS. In that time, testing and treatment have developed, to change prospects for the better for people who have the disease.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is an institute director at the National Institutes of Health, and he has been an authority on HIV since its early days. Back then, patients might live only months. Fauci notes that antiretroviral drugs now can extend lives for decades. But he says there’s still much left to do:

``We are hoping that we might get a cure, and we also need to get to people who are infected who don’t know that they are infected – to get them into care and to put them on therapy.’’  (11 seconds)

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: July 11, 2011