At the same time as Congolese independence, thousands of Haitians were fleeing the dictatorship of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Some were officially encouraged to take part in a UN-sponsored program recruiting francophone professionals to serve in Congo, which lacked sufficient university-educated civil servants and civic leaders.
"The U.N. brings in French-speaking ex-patriots from Haiti and other countries as nurses, doctors, teachers and technocrats, " said Timberg. "It looks very much as though one of them contracts HIV in Kinshasa, flies back to Haiti and every single strain of HIV they now contract in Europe or the Americas can be traced back to that single original infection in Haiti."
Haiti map
Haiti map
Five years ago, a group of international scientists at the Fourteenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Los Angeles confirmed this theory. They presented their conclusions based on genetic analysis of HIV samples. They said the strain found in Haiti had probably been brought from Africa in 1966.
Haiti was also center of blood donations shipped to the US to make products for hemophiliacs. And, it was a popular holiday destination for gay men from North America. It’s thought they probably facilitated the spread of the disease in the US and Europe through anal sex.
Disproved allegations
Scientific research has disproved other theories of the origins of HIV, including the idea that it was spread mainly by mass inoculations for polio in the 1950s, in part through unclean syringes. Timberg says the parts of Africa where the inoculations were performed do not have especially high rates of HIV infection. This is in contrast to areas with low circumcision rates, which do.
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25