The first 14 AIDS patients were from Manhattan and Greenwich Village in New York.
On June 5th 1981, the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) reported a cluster of cases of pneumocysitis pneumonia, a very rare condition, in 5 gay men in Los Angeles. This was the discovery of a new disease that would be called AIDS. But the 30-year story of HIV and AIDS commemorated last month is severely truncated. The story typically starts from the first diagnosis of HIV but ignores where, when and how the virus originated. Theories propagated in 1980s by western scientists about the African origin of HIV and AIDS through eating monkeys and chimpanzees became increasingly ridiculous, untenable and laughable, and were quietly discarded. It was a scientific fraud.
By the end of 1981, a total of 121 people in USA had died of AIDS and were from San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. It means they had been infected at least two years earlier – ie 1979. They had never been to African nor eaten monkeys or chimpanzees. The very first AIDS patient was called Gaetan Dugas from Manhattan, New York, referred to as Patient Zero. An epidemic moves from an epicentre to non-infected area and takes time. It follows that from the origin in USA to Africa it took two to five years. The earliest recognised AIDS case in Uganda was diagnosed in 1982, in Kenya 1983, in Burundi 1984, Botswana 1986, and Ethiopia 1987. Between 1981 and 1983, there were 5,660 AIDS cases in the US compared to only 17 for the entire Africa, suggesting that US was the epicentre and origin of HIV/AIDS.
