Oct 30, 2007

Haiti The Source Of HIV/ AIDS in The Caribbean and USA


A new US study is claiming that Haiti played a key role in the spread of HIV from Central Africa to the Caribbean and the rest of the world. The paper was headed by Michael Worobey, an assistant professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.


Professor Worobey said the findings confirmed long standing suspicions among some scientists that the HIV strain that touched off the US AIDS epidemic was imported from Haiti.According to the study Haitian workers brought the virus from Central Africa to western hemisphere nations including the Caribbean and US.


Professor Worobey told BBC Caribbean their data had shown that it was unlikely the virus could have been in the US prior to it being in Haiti. “There is a greater than ninety-nine percent probability given the data that it was in Haiti first and moved to the US afterwards”, he said.


Professor Worobey's paper suggests that that the HIV virus jumped from Haiti to Trinidad and Tobago, causing the predominately heterosexual outbreak in that nation. It also says the AIDS problems on Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago could not have been brought in by North American sex tourists visiting the Caribbean in the 1970 and 1980's.

SOURCE: cbc.bb



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