In his State of the Union speech, President Donald Trump called on funding to eliminate HIV and AIDS within 10 years. Here’s a look at the data behind the virus that once killed more people than liver disease, but has become less lethal in recent years.
The spread of HIV peaked in the mid-1980s, as the United States had an estimated 130,400 new cases in both 1984 and 1985, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC data shows that the number of diagnoses have been declining since 2006. In 2017, the agency released a report suggesting the decline is “due in large part, to efforts to increase the number of people living with HIV who know their HIV status and are virally suppressed.”
