One Life

Understanding HIV

A brief synopsis of HIV and the growing numbers of infections around the world.

• HIV first came on the scene in North America in the early 1980s, when otherwise healthy (and mostly gay) men were becoming sick with what was called “gay cancer” and a certain type of pneumonia called pneumocystitis.
• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) eventually coined the terms AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) to identify the cluster of disease symptoms that were affecting increasing numbers of men in the prime of their lives.
• A few years later, researchers discovered that those people who eventually developed AIDS had first been infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), a virus that was passed through the blood mainly through sexual contact and intravenous drug use.
• In 1987, the first treatment was introduced, and began to change the outlook for people living with HIV and/or AIDS.
• In 2007, approximately 2 million people were living with HIV/AIDS in North America and Western and Central Europe, 81,000 of whom were newly infected with HIV that year. Of those 2 million, approximately 31,000 died of AIDS-related causes.

Today in Canada

• Men who have sex with men are still the largest group to be diagnosed with HIV, their total numbers have decreased over the years.
• Women make up one-quarter of those diagnosed with HIV—most are infected through heterosexual contact. In fact, HIV infection through heterosexual contact among both men and women has increased dramatically in recent years.