The year 1981 stands as a milestone in medical history for being the year in which the most deadly disease to hit mankind so far was identified. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS was initially referred to as Gay Related Immune Deficiency or GRID since the first few reported cases of the disease were diagnosed in homosexual men. Further research on this subject brought to light the fact that the disease may have originated long before 1981.

In fact, there is evidence to prove the presence of the disease in a Bantu man who died in the year 1959 in Belgian Congo. Many studies denote this to be the first case of AIDS. The two viruses linked with AIDS namely HIV-1 and HIV-2 are said to hail from Africa. The causal virus actually seems to have flourished around the times of World War II.

It was in the year 1981 that several cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, which is a lung infection and Kaposi's sarcoma, an uncommon variant of skin cancer came into limelight in New York and Los Angeles. This triggered off a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on individuals comprising young men, women and children with failing immunity. Thereafter, in 1982 almost 14 countries identified cases of AIDS. It was in the same year itself that the CDC established reports on the presence of AIDS in a hemophilic patient and in a new born child delivered by a mother infected with AIDS. These cases were enough evidence to associate the disease with blood transfusions. In the year 1983, LAV virus was identified in France by Dr. Luc Montagnier from the Pasteur Institute located in France as the causal agent of the fatal disease, while the same was ascertained by Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute to be HTLV-III in 1984. However, in 1986 it was projected that the two viruses that is LAV and HTLV-III were the same and were renamed as HIV or Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

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