US Aids activists mark anniversary

Victims' names were read out at a vigil in Washington

Health groups in the United States have launched the first national Aids awareness drive for more than a decade to mark the 20th anniversary of the discovery of the disease.

Aids is a holocaust, kills millions, will end up killing billions, and you have to be afraid

Aids activist Francis Parrish

Thousands of people have been attending a public vigil in Washington at which health campaigners read out the names of some of the 450,000 American victims of Aids.

The 12 groups backing the initiative say new treatments and a fall in the US death toll have led to complacency.

The groups say Aids remains a huge threat, especially in developing countries, and some 30 million people worldwide are infected with the virus that leads to the disease.

Complacency

Aids was first mentioned in a specialist medical journal in 1981, which described the deaths of five gay men in Los Angeles from a rare strain of pneumonia.

It got little public attention at first, and it was more than a year before the centre coined the name, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

New drugs have caused the death toll to fall and public complacency to rise

Since then, what was initially described as a disease of gay men has spread to every corner of the world and killed 21 million people, mostly the poor of Africa and Asia.

In America, new drugs have caused the death toll to fall and public complacency to rise in recent years.

The new campaign is aimed at reminding Americans that 15,000 people become infected every day by Aids around the world - a number which is a potential catastrophe for the economies, social fabrics and health care systems of many countries, activists say.

New treatments

Aids seems to no longer frighten many gay New Yorkers, a fact that terrifies activists who remember the deadly disease's toll.

"In those years, in the 1980s, we had a sense of urgency. The virus meant death," said Francis Parrish, a lawyer and Aids activist.

Aids facts

30 million people worldwide have HIV

21 million people have died of Aids, mostly in Africa and Asia

15,000 people worldwide are infected by Aids daily

450,000 Americans have died of Aids

"We would be marching into Washington or holding protests after dancing and staying up all night.

"We would come back from a rave... to participate in acts that were provocative, ballsy, designed to draw attention to Aids, to the needs of people with Aids," he said.

But with the success of new treatments for the disease that allows people to live longer, a younger generation of gays is emerging that believes victims can live with Aids, he said.

A study released last month showed young gay and bisexual men in the United States, especially those who are black, were becoming infected with HIV at rates similar to those seen when the Aids epidemic peaked in the mid-1980s.

"Aids is a holocaust, kills millions, will end up killing billions, and you have to be afraid... Fear is the principal motivation to be an activist," Mr Parrish said.