San Francisco General Hospital became one of the centers of the AIDS epidemic within weeks of the CDC's First Reports. Paul Volberding, a young oncologist hired to build the hospital's cancer division, started on July 1, 1981, and on his first day saw a patient with what would come to be called AIDS. As cases multiplied, he and infectious disease specialist Constance Wofsy began seeing patients in rooms that residents and students used as sleeping quarters at night.

On January 1, 1983, they opened Ward 86, in unused space on the sixth floor of Building 80, as the world's first dedicated outpatient AIDS clinic, created by the San Francisco Department of Public Health in partnership with the University of California, San Francisco. The staff was small: Volberding, Wofsy, a nurse, Gayling Gee, and a clerk.

Six months later the hospital opened the first dedicated inpatient AIDS unit in the United States. Ward 5B opened on July 25, 1983, with twelve beds for AIDS and…