EbolaResponses to Ebola markedly different from responses to AIDS

While there are some similarities between the AIDS epidemic and the Ebola outbreak, the response to the diseases by health officials and governments are completely different. The global response to Ebola has been swift compared to the response to AIDS, which did not receive international intervention until the mid-1990s, when the United Nations’ UNAIDS program was launched. International health organizations first identified Ebola in 1976, soon after, tests were developed to diagnose it, though work on vaccines and treatments has been limited. Several Ebola outbreaks have been reported in Africa ever since, and while this year marked the first time Ebola reached U.S. shores, at least scientists had a head start in understanding the virus and disease.

According to Yahoo News, when the first cases of AIDS were reported in the United States in 1981, health officials were unfamiliar with the disease. “We didn’t know it was a virus. We had no idea what was going on,” recalled David Celentano, who researched AIDS in the 1980s and is now a professor at the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University’s school of public health. Shortly, Americans began to perceive AIDS as only occurring in certain demographics: gay men and intravenous drug users. “There was kind of a sense that ‘it’s only happening in certain places, and it only happens to certain people,’” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, a Columbia University professor who treated AIDS patients in New York City. A 1985 Los Angeles Times national poll found that more than 50 percent of Americans favored the quarantining of AIDS patients and 15 percent supported tattooing Americans who had the disease. Beginning in 1987, HIV-positive travelers were banned from entering the United States, until the rule was changed in January 2010.

HIV/AIDS kills more than a million people annually worldwide, while this recent Ebola outbreak, the largest on record, has killed roughly 4,500 people in West Africa. Both diseases emerged from Africa and are caused by viruses spread through bodily fluids, but HIV can be more deadly than Ebola. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, notes that “Ebola is transmitted when a person is sick, usually very sick, and you have to come into direct contact with bodily fluids. So it’s difficult not to know you’re exposed.” HIV, though less transmissible, has had a greater impact on vulnerable populations and “you can unwittingly get into contact with someone and have it transferred.”