When did AIDS crisis start in Africa?
HIV emerged in Africa in the 1960s and spread to the United States and Europe the following decade. In the 1980s it spread across the globe until it became a pandemic. Some areas of the world were already significantly impacted by AIDS, while in others the epidemic was just beginning.
When did they start to treat AIDS?
The group went on to develop Zidovudine (AZT), the first medicine for the treatment of HIV and AIDS – which was approved in the US on 19 March 1987.
When were ARVs introduced in South Africa?
South Africa introduced free ARVs in the public sector in April 2004 after a lengthy battle between activists and former President Thabo Mbeki and Health Minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who questioned the link between HIV and AIDS, and ARVs' effectiveness.
Overview
History of spread
David Carr was an apprentice printer (usually mistakenly referred to as a sailor; Carr had served in the Navy between 1955 and 1957) from Manchester, England who died August 31, 1959, and was for some time mistakenly reported to have died from AIDS-defining opportunistic infections (ADOIs). Following the failure of his immune system, he succumbed to pneumonia. Doctors, baffled by what he had died from, preserved 50 of his tissue samples for inspection. In 1990, th…
Transmission from non-humans to humans
The majority of HIV researchers agree that HIV evolved at some point from the closely related simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), and that SIV or HIV (post mutation) was transferred from non-human primates to humans in the recent past (as a type of zoonosis). Research in this area is conducted using molecular phylogenetics, comparing viral genomic sequences to determine relatedness.
Emergence
The discovery of the main HIV/SIV phylogenetic relationships permits explaining broad HIV biogeography: the early centres of the HIV-1 groups were in Central Africa, where the primate reservoirs of the related SIVcpz and SIVgor viruses (chimpanzees and gorillas) exist; similarly, the HIV-2 groups had their centres in West Africa, where sooty mangabeys, which harbour the related SIVsmm virus, exist. However, these relationships do not explain more detailed patterns of biog…
Pathogenicity of SIV in non-human primates
In most non-human primate species, natural SIV infection does not cause a fatal disease (but see below). Comparison of the gene sequence of SIV with HIV should, therefore, provide information about the factors necessary to cause disease in humans. The factors that determine the virulence of HIV as compared to most SIVs are only now being elucidated. Non-human SIVs contain a nef gene that down-regulates CD3, CD4, and MHC class I expression; most non-human SIVs, therefore…
Activism by AIDS patients and families
In New York City, Nathan Fain, Larry Kramer, Larry Mass, Paul Popham, Paul Rapoport, and Edmund White officially established the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) in 1982.
Also in 1982, Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz published How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach. In this short work, they described ways gay men could be sexual and affectionate while dramatically reducing the risk of contracting or spreading HIV. Both authors were themselves ga…
Identification of the virus
In May 1983, a team of doctors at the Pasteur Institute in France including Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier reported that they had isolated a new retrovirus from lymphoid ganglions that they believed was the cause of AIDS. The virus was later named lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV) and a sample was sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which was later passed to the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Case definition for epidemiological surveillance
Since June 5, 1981, many definitions have been developed for epidemiological surveillance such as the Bangui definition and the 1994 expanded World Health Organization AIDS case definition.