Where did HIV Come From? Hunter Theory

2. Where did HIV Come From?Hunter Theory • A Hunter was exposed to SIV (monkey virus) while hunting or butchering a monkey. The SIV ‘morphed’ to HIV in the hunters body. The hunter is now infected with HIV. • Researchers believed this happened many times but the outbreak would die off in the small isolated village the hunter lived in. One time it took off like no other. • They believe that the transmission event that has caused the current pandemic of HIV happened around the 1930’s. From that single transmission event when 1 man was infected from 1 monkey HIV has gone on to spread person to person to approximately 80 million people. • Contributing factors – • The urbanization of Africa, cars trains and other forms of transportation aloud a person that lived in the bush or village to travel to more densely populated areas like cities. If an infected hunter were to travel to a city that person could no infect more people. • Unwitting vaccine transfer, during this time vaccine controls were vaccinating thousands of people a day for diseases like small pox and polio. The technique of using 1 needle to vaccinate many people would also expose many more people to HIV if someone getting the vaccine had HIV. • From testing saved blood samples researchers have found that first confirmed death from HIV occurred in 1959 in the Congo region of Africa (West Central Africa).