1920s: HiV and AIDS

The origin of the Aids pandemic has been traced to the 1920s in the city of Kinshasa:

what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo !

Kinshasa was  the centre of the pandemic :

                 

An international team of scientists say a "perfect storm" of population growth, sex and railways allowed HIV to spread.

A feat of viral archaeology was used to find the pandemic's origin, the team report in the journal Science.

They used archived samples of HIV's genetic code to trace its source, with evidence pointing to 1920s Kinshasa.

Their report says a roaring sex trade, rapid population growth and unsterilised needles used in health clinics probably spread the virus.

Belgium-backed railways had one million people flowing through the city each year :

taking the virus to neighbouring regions.


HIV came to global attention in the 1980s and has infected nearly 75 million people.

Experts said it was a fascinating insight into the start of the pandemic.

A team at the University of Oxford and the University of Leuven, in Belgium,

tried to reconstruct HIV's "family tree" and find out where its oldest ancestors came from.

The research group analysed mutations in HIV's genetic code.


"You can see the footprints of history in today's genomes, it has left a record,
a mutation mark in the HIV genome that can't be eradicated,"

Prof Oliver Pybus : University of Oxford.

HIV is a mutated version of a chimpanzee virus, known as simian immunodeficiency virus,

which probably made the species-jump through contact with infected blood

while handling bush meat.

It was already known that HIV in humans arose by cross species transmission

from chimpanzees in that region of Africa :

but this study maps in great detail the spread of the virus from Kinshasa,

it was fascinating to read."



sure is 

It is easier to say it was manufactured in a Lab and sprayed in Africa

eh , Mapoui ??  :-\

Maps say its the US who did that!