Poster, 'For this many people with AIDS…This many people have the virus', with information about HIV and AIDS, produced by the Health Education Authority, England, c1986-1990.

AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is a fatal disease affecting the immune system. It seriously restricts the body’s ability to fight infection and diseases. This poster illustrates how there were far more people carrying HIV, the virus leading to AIDS, than with the syndrome itself during the late 1980s. Many HIV carriers were unaware they were infected so there was enormous potential to spread the disease, unknowingly. The Health Education Authority poster suggests for every one person with HIV, there were 30 carriers. Compared with today’s figures this seems very small. As of December 2007, an estimated 77,400 people were living with HIV in the UK. Approximately 20,700 of these were unaware of their infection.