The History of AIDS in Africa: Origins, Spread, and Impact

Since the earliest reported cases in the 1980s, AIDS rapidly spread across Africa to become the continent's leading public health crisis. Slow response by African governments and international health organizations aided the spread of the disease.

Identification

• The first official AIDS cases in Africa were reported in 1982. AIDS reached epidemic levels within a few years and spread quickly across the continent.

Prevention/Solution

• Scientific advances have made it possible to detect the presence of the virus that causes AIDS in blood or plasma samples, as well as subtypes of the virus. Thanks to this advance, scientists have been able to identify cases of HIV infection in Africa that predate the first official cases in the 1980s.

History

• Avert, an international AIDS charity based in the United Kingdom, reported on its website that the earliest known cases of HIV infection in Africa date back to 1959 and 1960. In one case, a plasma sample taken from a man in the Congo in 1959 was infected with HIV.

Early Case

• Avert also reported that a second case, also in the Congo, involved a sample of lymph node tissue taken from a woman in 1960.

Expert Insight

• Avert, citing the journal "Nature," reported that a 1998 analysis of the plasma sample from 1959 suggests that HIV first infected humans in the 1940s or 1950s. Another study reported in "Nature" suggests that HIV hit Africa between 1884 and 1924, according to Avert.