NY1: 45 years after first AIDS report, HIV cases are rising again in NYC

At the AIDS Memorial in Greenwich Village on Friday, people lit candles for those the city couldn’t save.

“It is a reminder of who I’ve lost. It is a reminder of the situation that existed politically in this country to allow that to happen,” Javier Munoz said.

Forty-five years ago, on June 5, the CDC published a single page about five dying men in Los Angeles. For four years, the federal government had said nothing.

What followed killed more than 700,000 Americans. Over 100,000 of them lived in New York City.

“My first partner was living with then AIDS. He passed away in my arms in what used to be St. Vincent’s Hospital, and that was 1996,” Munoz said.

That same year, combination drug therapy arrived — the science that could have saved his partner. But it’s something that saved Munoz.

The kid from East New York went on to play Alexander Hamilton on Broadway, survived cancer and built a life his partner never got to see. All of it while living with HIV.

“He really didn’t have many options. He’d probably still be here with me,” Munoz said.