Latin American, China, and the countries of the former Soviet Union (Sabin, 2001, A1).
One of the largest challenges to help prevent HIV infection and deaths from AIDS in many of these countries revolves around access to powerful AIDS drugs that are cocktail-like combinations of antiviral drugs. Another challenge stems from the fact that many pharmaceutical companies that own patents on certain AIDS drugs that are the most promising will not license these patents to manufacturers in foreign countries or the countries cannot afford licensing fees. Further AIDS drugs have different reactions on different individuals, some of them quite debilitating and severe. Before exploring why it is critical to continue developing new AIDS and HIV drugs, the timeline below shows the evolution of AIDS and HIV in the US:
1981: A rare cancer affects gay men; the CDC calls it GRIP
1982: The new disease is officially named AIDS
1983: Institut Pasteur in France discovers HIV
1985: Actor Rock Hudson dies of AIDS
1987: The FDA approves the first AIDS drug, AZT
1988: 107-million copies of Understanding AIDS by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop are mailed to Americans
1990: Ryan White, whose battle against AIDS drew international attention, dies
1991: Magic Johnson announces he has AIDS; The WHO announces that 10-million people have AIDS globally
1995: A stronger, more sophisticated type of AIDS drug known as a protease inhibitor is approved for use in the US
1997: 22-million people worldwide are HIV-positive
2000: 774,467 people in the US have contracted the disease since 1981; 448,060 of them have died
2001: Death rates have dropped from 40,000 annually in the mid-1990s to 16,
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