A new book claims the AIDS epidemic began in a rainforest in southeastern Cameroon in 1908 and not more than 70 years later when the virus started to be recognized in the early 1980s.

For the book, which is subtitled 'How AIDS emerged from an African forest', Quammen traced the history of AIDS by examining genetic samples from humans and chimps.

His led him to believe the birthplace of the epidemic was the southeastern edge of Cameroon sometime around 1908.

Quammen theorizes that a hunter in the rainforest was infected with a immunodeficiency virus similar to HIV by a chimp he killed and butchered, the New York Post reported.

The hunter likely infected at least one other person through sex and the virus continued to make its way down the Sangha River in that matter until it reached the city of Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in the Congo.

After reaching the Congo, the virus spread even faster via the continued re-use of hypodermic syringes at health clinics.



Treatment for a common ailment in the area at the time required 36 injections over three years and most needles were used over and over.

Quammen wrote: 'Once the reusable needles and syringes had put the virus into enough people — say, several hundred — it wouldn't come to a dead end, it wouldn't burn out, and sexual transmission could do the rest.'

French-speaking Haitians who were working in the Congo went home after Belgium gave up the colony in 1950.

Quammen added: 'Someone brought back to Haiti, along with Congolese memories, a dose of HIV-1, Group M, Subtype B.'

The re-use of needles allowed the virus to spread in Haiti and an infected person or infected container of blood plasma likely brought AIDS to America 'in 1969, plus or minus about three years'.

Quammen wrote: 'It reached hemophiliacs through the blood supply.

'It reached drug addicts through shared needles.

It reached gay men… by sexual transmission, possibly from an initial contact between two males, an American and a Haitian.'

The account contradicts the theory put forth in Randy Shilts' history of AIDS, And the Band Played On.

In his book, Shilts theorizes the virus could have been brought to the US by a gay Air Canada steward named Gaëtan Dugas.

He called Dugas 'Patient Zero' and hypothesized he infected at least 40 people with HIV.


If Quammen is right, there is no way Dugas could have brought HIV to the US.

Quammen wrote: 'Dugas himself was infected by some other human, presumably during a sexual encounter — and not in Africa . . . somewhere closer to home.

'As evidence now shows, HIV had already arrived in North America when Gaëtan ­Dugas was a virginal adolescent.'

Since 1981, about 78 million people have been infected by HIV.

The virus destroys immune cells and leaves the body exposed to tuberculosis, pneumonia and other opportunistic diseases.

Thirty-nine million people have died, according to UN estimates.

Antiretroviral drugs, invented in the mid-1990s, can treat infection but cannot cure it or prevent it.



The number of people newly infected with HIV over the last year was lower than the number of HIV-positive people getting access to the medicines they need to keep AIDS at bay, according to a report by the ONE campaign

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2964062/AIDS-epidemic-began-Cameroon-1908-says-Chimp-River-book-David-Quammen.html

lobatan

First I heard it was US now it's Cameroon.,,....maybe Naija next

The last I knew about the history, it was traced to the Belgian Congo around the 1930s or so by Hindsight or say retrospective diagnosis. Then as it trans-mutated, it arrived the European region via returning missionaries. It was to be finally identified and diagnosed scientifically in 1981. In retrospect, scientists now understood that the mysterious immuno-suppressive syndromes being noted in returning missionaries and colonialist soldiers fitted what was diagnosed in 1981. But the caveat there, was that it was first prepared as a vaccine for Africa in the early 1900s. but ended up being brought back and wasnt correctly diagnosed till many years after.
Enuf said...


Abians have started rejecting the attempts to bribe them with morsels of food and little cash by visionless and planless Guber candidates of the APGA and PDP parties. They are demanding for each candidate to lay down his plans for Abia because Abians are not beggers.
The shocker has just begun.

Labor party all the way.
visit www.emekaotimbagov.com to see the Abia state of your dreams

Bullshiitt

How can AIDs first be from cameroun? white lies from whiteys