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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
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.
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Description
Keywords
HIV-2 Disease emergence West Africa Zoonosis Biomedical technology Historical epidemiology
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Varanda, J., & Santos, J. M. (2023). It was not the perfect storm: the social history of the HIV-2 virus in Guinea-Bissau. Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease, 8(5), 261. https://doi.org/10.3390/tropicalmed8050261
Publisher
MDPI