HIV/AIDS

The oldest confirmed human sample containing HIV is a blood specimen taken in 1959 in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, in the Belgian Congo. Genetic studies show that HIV-1 descends from a simian immunodeficiency virus of chimpanzees in west central Africa, which crossed to humans in the early twentieth century, probably through contact with infected animals. The virus spread silently for decades before the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, was first recognised in 1981 through reports of unusual illnesses among young men in the United States. The virus was identified in 1983 by Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. The introduction of combination antiretroviral therapy in the mid-1990s turned HIV infection from an almost always fatal disease into a manageable chronic condition for those with access to treatment.

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