1959: The oldest blood sample ever retroactively identified as carrying the human immunodeficiency virus was donated by a dying man in Leopoldville, Congo, nearly 50 years ago.

1981: GRID stood for Gay Related Immune Deficiency. Its causes were a mystery.

1982: Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is defined for the first time.

1983: The heterosexual AIDS epidemic in central Africa is reported, but in North America and Europe the disease continues to be associated almost exclusively with gay men. By this time Dr. Luc Montagnier of France has isolated a virus he first calls lymphadenopathy-associated virus. It was later called human immunodeficiency virus.

1984: Dr. Robert Gallo of the United States identifies HIV as the cause of AIDS.

1985: The World Health Organization begins to develop protocols for dealing with AIDS in Bangui, Central African Republic, but the AIDS story that dominates the headlines is Rock Hudson’s impending death.

1986: The Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GNP+) comes into existence.

1987: Uganda begins its community based response to AIDS with The AIDS Support Organization or TASO, and the first drug shown to slow the progress of HIV to AIDS — azidothymidine or AZT — is approved in the United States.

1988: The World Health Organization declares Dec. 1 World AIDS Day and health ministers from around the world meet for the first time to discuss AIDS in London.

1990: The red ribbon becomes an international symbol for the fight against AIDS.

1993: The first evidence that Uganda and Thailand’s efforts to stop the spread of HIV have begun to work.

1994: Treatment developed to reduce the risk of mother to child transmission through breast feeding.

1996: David Ho and others show how HIV replication and pathogenesis can be reduced through a combination of drugs at the XI International Conference on AIDS in Vancouver. Brazil begins to provide antiretroviral therapy (ARV) through its public health system.

1997: In Kampala, Uganda and Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, UNAIDS launch the first public antiretroviral therapy programs in Africa.1998: A coalition of 39 pharmaceutical companies go to court to try to prevent South Africa’s government from passing a law that would reduce the price of their medicines.1999: A potential vaccine against HIV is given clinical trials in Thailand.

2000: The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals include reversing the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria — leading to the establishment of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

2001: Pope John Paul II in a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan thanks scientists, medical practitioners and communities for their fight against HIV and AIDS. “The Catholic Church, through her magisterium and her commitment to the victims of HIV/AIDS, continues to affirm the sacred value of life. Her efforts with regard to prevention and assistance to those affected, often in co-operation with the institutions of the United Nations, are in keeping with her mission of love and service to the lives of all, from conception to natural death,” the pope wrote.

2001: The World Trade Organization steps into the fight between poor countries and pharmaceutical companies over ARV drug patents and pricing with its Doha Declaration.

2002: The first round of Global Fund grants announced.

2003: Canadian Stephen Lewis, the UN’s special ambassador on AIDS, spearheads the 3 by 5 initiative to increase the number of people with access to ARV treatment from 400,000 to three million. The campaign never reaches its goal. By 2005 the number was actually just over one million. U.S. President George Bush announces plans to spend $15 billion (U.S.) over five years.2005: Lewis calls the commitment from G8 leaders in Gleneagles, Scotland, to come as close as possible to universal access for ARVs by 2010 a “scandalous shortfall.” Lewis also lashes out at the UN bureaucracy responsible for co-ordinating the international response to the epidemic as “paralysed,” “uncritical” and “preposterously deferential.”

June 10, 2005: Pope Benedict XVI tells South Africa’s bishops during their ad limina visit, “I share your deep concern over the devastation caused by AIDS and related diseases. I especially pray for the widows, the orphans, the young mothers and those whose lives have been shattered by this cruel epidemic. I urge you to continue your efforts to fight this virus.”

December 2005: UNAIDS and the WHO release their annual Global Summary of the AIDS Epidemic, announcing that there are more than 40 million people living with HIV or AIDS, and between 4.3 and 6.6 million had contracted the disease in 2005. Deaths topped 3.1 million per year.