TY - JOUR
T1 - It Was Not the Perfect Storm
T2 - The Social History of the HIV-2 Virus in Guinea-Bissau
AU - Varanda, Jorge
AU - Santos, José Maurício
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by a Collaborative Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities “An International Collaboration on the Political, Social, and Cultural History of the Emergence of HIV/AIDS.”, no. RZ5152313, together with financial support from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) PTDC/AFR/100646/2008 and UIDB/04038/2020 as well as FCT for funds to GHTM—UID/04413/2020.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 by the authors.
PY - 2023/5
Y1 - 2023/5
N2 - The perfect storm model that was elaborated for the HIV-1M pandemic has also been used to explain the emergence of HIV-2, a second human immunodeficiency virus-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV-AIDS) that became an epidemic in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. The use of this model creates epidemiological generalizations, ecological oversimplifications and historical misunderstandings as its assumptions—an urban center with explosive population growth, a high level of commercial sex and a surge in STDs, a network of mechanical transport and country-wide, en masse mobile campaigns—are absent from the historical record. This model fails to explain how the HIV-2 epidemic actually came about. This is the first study to conduct an exhaustive examination of sociohistorical contextual developments and align them with environmental, virological and epidemiological data. The interdisciplinary dialogue indicates that the emergence of the HIV-2 epidemic piggybacked on local sociopolitical transformations. The war’s indirect effects on ecological relations, mobility and sociability were acute in rural areas and are a key to the HIV-2 epidemic. This setting had the natural host of the virus, the population numbers, the mobility trends and the use of technology on a scale needed to foster viral adaptation and amplification. The present analysis suggests new reflections on the processes of zoonotic spillovers and disease emergence.
AB - The perfect storm model that was elaborated for the HIV-1M pandemic has also been used to explain the emergence of HIV-2, a second human immunodeficiency virus-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV-AIDS) that became an epidemic in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. The use of this model creates epidemiological generalizations, ecological oversimplifications and historical misunderstandings as its assumptions—an urban center with explosive population growth, a high level of commercial sex and a surge in STDs, a network of mechanical transport and country-wide, en masse mobile campaigns—are absent from the historical record. This model fails to explain how the HIV-2 epidemic actually came about. This is the first study to conduct an exhaustive examination of sociohistorical contextual developments and align them with environmental, virological and epidemiological data. The interdisciplinary dialogue indicates that the emergence of the HIV-2 epidemic piggybacked on local sociopolitical transformations. The war’s indirect effects on ecological relations, mobility and sociability were acute in rural areas and are a key to the HIV-2 epidemic. This setting had the natural host of the virus, the population numbers, the mobility trends and the use of technology on a scale needed to foster viral adaptation and amplification. The present analysis suggests new reflections on the processes of zoonotic spillovers and disease emergence.
KW - biomedical technology
KW - disease emergence
KW - historical epidemiology
KW - HIV-2
KW - West Africa
KW - zoonosis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85160242435&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/tropicalmed8050261
DO - 10.3390/tropicalmed8050261
M3 - Article
C2 - 37235309
AN - SCOPUS:85160242435
SN - 2414-6366
VL - 8
JO - Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease
JF - Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease
IS - 5
M1 - 261
ER -