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Dr Wafaa El-Sadr is director of ICAP at Columbia University in New York. She was working as a young doctor in Harlem, when a mystery illness began to emerge in the early 1980s. At that time, they didn't know they were witnessing the start of an epidemic that would sweep across the world. Wafaa describes what that period was like for her.

Image: AIDS Candlelight vigil
Credit: DENIS POROY/AFP/Getty Images