AIDS diagnoses and deaths

In June 1981, the first cases of what is now known as AIDS were reported in the USA. During the 1980s, there were rapid increases in the number of AIDS cases and deaths of people with AIDS. Cases peaked with the 1993 expansion of the case definition1, and then declined. The most dramatic drops in both cases and deaths began in 1996, with the widespread use of combination antiretroviral therapy.
Since 2000 the annual numbers of AIDS diagnoses have been relatively constant, with an estimated 37,852 in 2006. In total, an estimated 1,014,797 people have been diagnosed with AIDS in America.
The death rate among people with AIDS has also remained relatively stable in recent years; there were an estimated 14,627 deaths in 2006. Since the beginning of the epidemic, an estimated 565,927 people with AIDS have died in the USA.