“I was supposed to be dead by now,” said Tez Anderson, a 65-year-old who’s been living with HIV since 1983. Doctors at the time gave him two years to live, he said, a common life expectancy for someone diagnosed with HIV before treatment became available in 1987. But Anderson defied the odds and today is the president of a nonprofit advocating for people living long-term with HIV. “It feels like the world has moved on [from] HIV,” he said. “Meanwhile, there are those of us who lost more friends than we can count, more funerals than we can count.”
More than half of the 1 million Americans living with HIV are over 50, according to the most recent data. And about one third of those 55 and older were diagnosed for the first time when they already had late-stage HIV.
As people who survived the 1980s HIV/AIDS epidemic grow older, they grapple with age-related health complications on top of or exacerbated by a positive HIV diagnosis. HIV can, for instance, increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, dementia, frailty and some cancers. […]
Click here to view the full piece. This story was originally published by Route Fifty on September 13, 2024.
