ABSTRACT
There are tremendous misconceptions about when and where HIV began to spread. In the industrialized countries and in Central and Eastern Africa, extensive spreading probably did not begin until the mid-1970s. HIV has probably been present for at least a millennia in Central Africa. There is evidence that the virus was present at low levels in rural parts of Africa in the 1970s. A follow-up in the same population in the mid-1980s showed similar low levels. This suggests that distribution and the prevalence of HIV infections is very dependent on where the virus began to spread in the population and on the sexual and drug behavior in the population. In most of the Eastern and Central African countries, TB has either been steady or going down until a few years ago. Now it's unquestionably rising. One of the things that HIV gives people is tuberculosis. There are a lot of new cases of TB in HIV negative people.
