This Day in History: June 5, 1986
Additional Date: June 5, 1986
A United Nations report estimates the number of people who have HIV/AIDS in Africa at 50,000. The report came five years after the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (USA) reported that 5 gay men in California were suffering from a rare pneumonia (Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia or PCP). This strain of pneumonia was found in patients with weakened immune systems. Later in the 1980s, a blood sample taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1959 was tested and revealed the HIV virus. This suggested that HIV/AIDS might have been introduced to humans in the 1940s or early 1950s.
Today Africa has millions of people who have HIV/AIDS.