The origins of AIDS

Summary: This account traces the origins and development of the most dramatic and destructive disease epidemic of modern times. Inspired by his own experiences working as an infectious diseases physician in Africa, the author looks back to the early twentieth-century events in Africa that triggered the emergence of HIV/AIDS and the subsequent evolution and transmission of the disease before it was first officially identified in 1981. He shows how the disease was first transmitted from chimpanzees to man to fuel the spread of the virus to the rest of Africa, the Caribbean and ultimately worldwide. The book focuses on the specific circumstances in Leopoldville, the capital of the Belgian Congo, where urbanization, the spread of prostitution, and medical interventions to control the incidence of tropical diseases interconnected to fuel the communication of HIV-1 in the 1960s, as the country struggled to adapt to its newfound independence. It is now thirty years since the discovery of AIDS but its origins continue to puzzle doctors and scientists. This is an essential new perspective on HIV/AIDS and on the lessons that must be learnt if we are to avoid provoking another pandemic in the future. With a synthesis of historical, political and medical elements, this book adds a coherent and necessary historical perspective to recent molecular studies of the chronology of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.