Question

Film : Rise of the Killer Virus
After learning about how HIV began to spread among humans in this film, who or what do you think is to blame and why?

Answer 1

* HIV is the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, the virus that causes AIDS. AIDS is Acquired Immune-Deficiency Syndrome. HIV infects lymphocyte white blood cells called T-cells. HIV becomes part of the cells, and when they multiply to fight an infection, they also make more copies of HIV.

HIV has been with us for much longer than most of us knew. It started to infect its first victims around 100 years ago in a remote part of central Africa. It was the colonial opening up of that region which created opportunities for the virus to jump into humans and then spread.

With nearly 40 million people killed and 30 million infected, AIDS is to date the most destructive pandemic in modern history. In an effort to combat the virus, a team of scientists travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo to investigate human specimens containing the virus.

The first transmission of AIDS - from chimpanzees to humans - was around the year 1908, decades before the first cases were known.

*Researchers explore the colonial history of the Congo to explain how HIV spread. In the early twentieth century, anxious not to lose the indigenous labour they exploit, the colonial authorities launch mass vaccination campaigns against sleeping sickness, often using inadequately sterilized syringes. Meanwhile, the railway is developing in the country because Kinshasa is a hub of the mining industry. The virus follows in its trail. When the Congolese celebrate their independence in 1960, the pandemic is smouldering, ready to ravage the country and, later, sub-Saharan Africa.