01.01.70
Edward Shaw has a direct and inviting smile, his glasses resting on the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t look like he’s 70. He talks about his autobiography with ease, even when it comes to disclosing that he has lived with HIV/AIDS for the past 23 years.
Shaw is one of thousands of diocese residents over 50 infected with HIV/AIDS. In June 2009, of the 107,177 New York Burgh People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), 42,442 were 50 years or older, according to a communiqu from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Life expectancy in the first years of the AIDS plague was very low. A report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) stated that the for the most part age of death for HIV/AIDS in 1991 was between 25 and 44 for men and between 15 and 44 for women. In 1994, destruction tolls were the highest, topping at 8,339 in New York City alone.
With the introduction in 1995 of protease inhibitors, a singular class of drugs that prevents viral replication, AIDS ceased to be a accurate death sentence. From then on, life expectancy has steadily improved, allowing HIV/AIDS sufferers to come of age old.
Source: The Brooklyn Ink