Study: Haiti “stepping stone” for HIV into Americas

A study released today by U.S. researchers claims that the HIV virus spread from Africa to the Americas via Haiti in the 1960s.

For years scientists believed the claim made by journalist Randy Shilts in “And the Band Played On”. Shilts’ theory said that AIDS had been spread by a gay Canadian flight attendant who died in 1984. Yet the conclusions of the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences posits otherwise:

"Our results show that the strain of virus that spawned the U.S. AIDS epidemic probably arrived in or around 1969. That is earlier than a lot of people had imagined," said senior author Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, Tuscon…

In fact "Haiti was the stepping stone the virus took when it left central Africa," said Worobey. "Once the virus got to the US then it just moved explosively around the world."

On a related note, pharmaceutical firm Merck has advised that the volunteers of an experimental AIDS vaccine get further tests since the vaccine may increase the risk of infection. Over 2000 people from several countries in the Americas including Haiti, Jamaica, and Brazil had volunteered for the trial in 2004.

Sources (English)- Reuters, The Telegraph, Wikipedia

Sources (Spanish)- El Tiempo

Image- the Money Times