Friday, October 28, 2011

HIV/AIDS in Africa (past)

As mentioned below HIV and AIDS were traced back to chimpanzees and monkeys in Africa as long ago as the 1930s, and it reached epidemic proportions in the 1970s and 1980s.  Where did AIDS begin in Africa though is of importance because it explains how the epidemic traveled and spread throughout the continent.  The exact beginning of AIDS is clouded with many theories and ideas but the majority agrees that the Congo was the first major area to be affected by the disease, though it is said it was brought to the area from either Cameroon or Guinea-Bissau.  Evidence that traces back to the 1960s shows a large prevalence of people with the disease in the Congo and the epidemic broke out in the capital of Kinshasa in the 1970s.  The urban environment in the capital and the prevalence of sex and sex workers is believed to be what caused the disease to spread so quickly and reach the proportion it did in such a short period of time.
Because it grew so much in an urban environment it also had the ability to spread fast.  If the disease had originated in a rural village with limited accessibility to the outside world it would not have had the ability to grow as fast but because it grew in an area with a large population and with many people traveling in and out of the city it was able to spread.  From the Congo the disease spread to eastern Africa and the countries of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda.  The disease spread even quicker and with more devastating affects in eastern Africa because of the high number of migrant men in an urban area, the health system as it was then, and the sex workers of the area.  Condom use was almost non-existent as was circumcision (circumcision lowers the risk of passing disease due to the increased ability to clean).
After eastern Africa was hit by the disease it spread to western Africa in the 1980s.  Certain cities such as Gabon and Cameroon did not see an epidemic level of the disease because of the distances between the major cities.  The lack of close urban areas and the insecurity that was going on in the region at the time (as most of Africa saw during the period after gaining independence) hindered the spread of the disease to an extent.  The only country that reached a comparable position with eastern Africa was the country of Guinea-Bissau which reached the highest level of HIV in the world by the mid-1980s.
The last region in Africa to gain the disease was southern Africa, although it is now the region that shows some of the largest numbers.  The southern countries of Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana show rates that could easily overtake those shown in eastern Africa.

The reasons why the HIV virus spread are numerous but geographically they spread or did not spread because of the locations of urban areas and the cultural traditions of the time which I will discuss in the next post!
Source for info: http://www.avert.org/history-aids-africa.htm

1 comment:

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