The age of AIDS. Part 1.

The first in an extensive and ambitious two-part series looking at AIDS and attempting to give a chronological account of AIDS awareness across the globe. In this part a vast amount of key figures involved in the initial discovery of the HIV virus and AIDS during the 1980s tell their story. We hear how, from seeming to be a purely homosexual disease, medical researchers discovered the virus could also be passed between drug addicts, blood transfusions and heterosexuals, in particular Africans. Jean Pape, who started the first AIDS clinic in Haiti, describes how AIDS was probably brought to Haiti by American tourists but because it spread there so quickly Haitians became like lepers and were ostracised. Mervyn Silverman, Director of Health in New York tells of his work to alter perception among the gay community and encourage safer sex. US and French scientists talk about how they tried to isolate the HIV virus - the French claim they had isolated the virus a year before it was announced in the US but that US scientists took the credit. It was with the public announcement that Rock Hudson was dying of AIDS that public fear and prejudice became most acute with nobody knowing how contagious the infection really was. News also spread of the seriousness of AIDS in Africa and we hear accounts of how Ugandan authorities began to try to enlighten people as to how to avoid infection, and indeed internationally a campaign began to encourage AIDS awareness. We hear about the introduction of AZT therapy and how many impoverished people in the US couldn't afford the high cost of the drug leading to highly successful public demonstrations. But government refusal to get involved meant that by 1987 over 40 000 Americans had died from the virus. By the 1990s millions of Americans were infected and over the next decade over 60 000 000 people would be infected.