New AIDS Findings to Alert a World at Risk
Some of the mysteries surrounding the transmission of the AIDS virus were removed by extensive new data presented at the International AIDS Conference in Paris last month. Seeking to understand why infection with the deadly virus occurs in some people but not in others, medical detectives called epidemiologists have been finding simple explanations for evidence that at first appeared complex and conflicting.
The candid discussions were
remarkable this time; just last November, when an international
conference on AIDS in Africa was held in Brussels, many of the African
nations represented in Paris cancelled their scheduled reports because
of extreme sensitivity about any public associations of AIDS with their
continent.
In Paris, the experts could agree that the AIDS infection is
fundamentally the same disease everywhere, whether it occurs in a
heterosexual woman in Africa, a baby in Haiti, a drug addict in New
York City or a homosexual man in Los Angeles. Among all peoples, the
AIDS virus appears to be equally contagious. Moreover, it appears to be
spread in the same ways: through sexual contact, exposure to tainted
blood and from infected mother to child--not by casual contact, insects
or poor sanitary conditions.
Before the conference, only nine African countries had officially
reported a total of 378 AIDS cases to the World Health Organization.
But the international group estimates that a minimum of 10,000 AIDS
cases may be occuring in Africa each year, involving more than 20
countries; between 1 million and 2 million Africans may be infected
with the virus, also known as HTLV-III or HIV, the "human
immunodeficiency virus." They are infectious to others, but may or may
not actually develop infections or tumors as a consequence of damage to
their immune systems.
Heterosexual intercourse, not homosexual contact, was shown to be the
dominant means of transmitting the virus in African nations and also in
Haiti, followed by exposure to contaminated blood. Both male-to-female
and female-to-male transmission occurs through vaginal sexual
intercourse, according to reports by Dr. Jonathan Mann of the World
Health Organization and other international authorities. These reports
refute previously held beliefs that homosexual or anal intercourse is
necessary for sexual transmission, except in rare instances, or that
the disease can be transmitted from men to women, but not from women to
men.