FM December 2020 digital P

outpatient AIDS clinic opened on 1
January 1983. Opened in collaboration
with University of California, it employed
only those who were passionate
about treating people with AIDS. Over
time, ‘Ward 86’, which was dedicated
exclusively for AIDS patients, gave rise
to the ‘San Francisco Model of Care’
that became the standard for treating
patients with AIDS. This was despite
the stigma associated with AIDS as a
disease which supposedly showed the
immoral side of one’s personal life.
But, from 1983 onwards, there has
been a change in social perception
about AIDS, at least among the medical
staff, and a rising awareness that HIV
infected patients must be treated with
compassion and respect. The ‘San
Francisco Model’ also became the
gold standard for the accessibility of
immediate medical care by providing an
array of health and social services under
one roof by close collaboration with the
local health department and community
organizations. This is still considered an
achievement and a wonder, because
at the time, AIDS was just starting to
make an appearance in medical records.
The name was not there in any hospital
record even two years earlier.
There is another memorable day
in the fight against AIDS, at least from
an academic point of view. That is
5 June 1981. It was on this day that
US Center for Disease Control (CDC)
published an article in its ‘Morbidity and
Mortality Weekly Report’, describing
cases of a rare lung infection caused
by Pneumocystis carinii. It was called
PCP in medical literature, short for
‘Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia’,
and affected five young, white, gay
men from Los Angeles who were
previously healthy. Dr Michael Gottlieb,
an immunologist, Dr Wayne Shandera
from CDC and their colleagues reported
that all the men have other unusual
infections as well, indicating that their
immune systems were not working.
Two of the patients were already dead
by the time the report was out in the
press and the others were in a critical
condition. This report, however, marked
FROM 1983 ONWARDS,
THERE HAS BEEN A CHANGE
IN SOCIAL PERCEPTION
ABOUT AIDS, AT LEAST
AMONG THE MEDICAL STAFF
the first official reporting of the most
notorious acronym and epidemic of the
present century and the next: AIDS, or
Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome.
The Fear Factor in Gay Sex
The day’s excitement was not over.
On the same day, Dr Alvin Friedman-
Kien, a dermatologist from New York,
telephoned CDC Head Quarters to
report a cluster of cases of a rare and
unusually aggressive cancer, Kaposi’s
Sarcoma, among gay men in New York
and California. Like ‘Pneumocystis Carinii
Pneumonia’, Kaposi’s Sarcoma was seen
to be associated with people who have
weakened immune systems. The next
day, many newspapers, including The
Los Angeles Times and San Francisco
Chronicle, made exclusive reports on
this ‘strange illness’ sweeping across
the city. Within days, CDC received a
torrent of reports from all over the
US, describing similar cases and other
opportunistic infections among gay
men. In response to these reports, CDC
established a Task Force on Kaposi’s
Sarcoma and other opportunistic
infections to identify the risk factors
so that a case definition for the ‘yetunnamed
syndrome’ can be made. On
July 2, a weekly newspaper for the gay
and lesbian community in San Francisco
coined the term ‘Gay Men’s Pneumonia’
and urged gay men experiencing
progressive shortness of brath to see
their physicians at the earliest.
On 3 July 1981, the New York Times
published an article entitled ‘Rare
Cancer in 41 Homosexuals’, helping
enter the term ‘Gay Cancer’ into
popular vocabulary. It was more than
a year later that CDC came up with
the term ‘Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome- AIDS’ and released the
first case definition for it: “A disease at
least moderately predictive of a defect
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