Researchers believe HIV/AIDS originated from Kinshasa, Congo, and it was due to interaction between human beings and monkeys. This was in 1920.
Ardouin Antonio was the first man to die of HIV/AIDS related complications. The 49-year-old Jamaican-American shipping clerk died of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a disease closely associated with AIDS. Gordon Hennigar, who performed the postmortem examination of the man’s body, found “the first reported instance of unassociated Pneumocystis carinii disease in an adult” to be so unusual that he preserved Ardouin’s lungs for later study. The case was published in two medical journals at the time, and Hennigar has been quoted in numerous publications saying that he believes Ardouin probably had AIDS.
By 1964, the virus had spread across Africa, dominating in Congo and Guinea-Bissau. It later spread into all African countries and later to Europe and Asia.
HIV first arrived in the Americas, infecting one person in Haiti. At this time, many Haitians were working in Congo, providing the opportunity for infection.
Though most researchers believe HIV originated from monkeys, British author Edward Hooper claimed that the disease originated as a product of cross-contamination from an oral polio vaccine administered in Africa in the late 1950s. The vaccine, called “Chat,” was claimed to be derived from chimp kidney cells and was thought to be contaminated with SIV. The vaccine was given to roughly a million people in the Belgian Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi.
The disease has killed millions of people across the world currently over 10 million people are infected. Researcher after researcher have conducted research to determine it’s cure but none has come with vaccine or drug that can completely eliminate the disease from the world.Currently,ARVs,which reduce the effects of the disease, is the only hope for human beings.
AIDS remains the worst threat to humanity; other diseases include cancer and tuberculosis, but they are curable.
