There are people who have lived with AIDS for decades, a disease that people were so terrified of in the ’80s and ’90s that they wouldn’t use the same water fountain as folks who had it. Recently, there have been strong prospects for a cure for AIDS. Ways to get tested have also expanded. You can get test kits at Walgreens, for instance. And for the first time in 22 years the International AIDS Conference is being held here in the United States.
Treatments have turned a disease with a near-certain death sentence into a disease that people can live with for decades. And there is evidence that the epidemic could be greatly slowed or even stopped if everyone who’s HIV-positive gets into treatment.
The prospect of curing HIV is also on the horizon, with a new understanding of why an American living in Berlin was cured after he received a bone marrow transplant. Michaeleen put together a cool slideshow here showing how it works.
Read more from AIDS/HIV Series on NPR
Original article posted on July 23, 2012 and written by Joe Neel for NPR.
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