Chicago Tribune (CT) - Sunday, November 24, 1985, Page: 12
Ronald Kotulak, Chicago Tribune

Representatives from central Africa said they were being unfairly blamed for the epidemic and accused the Western media and some researchers of distorting the magnitude of the problem there.

Scientists accused many central African countries, most of which have not officially reported any AIDS cases, of hindering research efforts that are important to understanding the cause of the deadly disease, which is believed to be epidemic in many areas.

Learning how the epidemic started and how it is spreading is vital to finding ways to control it and to develop new treatments, including possible vaccines.

"We don't see it (the AIDS epidemic) as a top priority," said Dr. David Serwadda, a Ugandan researcher. "But in 5 to 10 years it might be a serious problem if we don't do anything about it."

The Africans' anger parallels the bitterness expressed by many Haitians when they were originally listed as one of the high-risk AIDS groups in the U.S.

"We cannot pretend that AIDS is not here (in central Africa)," said Dr. Robin Weiss, of England's Institute of Cancer Research.

"Any country that hopes that by ignoring AIDS it will go away will put their people up as hostages who will suffer," he said.

Many central African countries, however, fear that the increasing attention being focused on them could have a devastating economic impact from lost tourism and new business ventures from abroad, said a number of observers.

"There is too much of an accusing finger being pointed at Africa as the cause of AIDS when the evidence is not that overwhelming," said Serwadda, of the Makerere Medical School in Kampala, Uganda.

The meeting, which attracted more than 700 people from 51 countries, was sponsored by the Commission of European Communities, the World Health Organization, the Belgian government and a number of drug companies, including Abbott Laboratories of North Chicago, a major developer of AIDS antibody tests.

At the end of the meeting 50 representatives of central African nations adopted a series of resolutions trying to play down their region's role in the AIDS epidemic.

"There is no conclusive evidence that AIDS originated in Africa," said one of the resolutions. "It is a global problem and not an African problem alone."

Other resolutions, however, called for more studies and recognized sexual promiscuity as a high-risk factor for AIDS in Africa, where AIDS is a heterosexual disease.

Reports appearing in American medical journals estimating that 10 percent of the people in central Africa carry the AIDS antibody were labeled as "exaggerations" by Serwadda.

Despite the protests from the central African representatives, most of the more than 80 scientific reports made at the meeting drew a grim picture of the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Although no accurate large-scale population studies have been performed in central Africa, small studies indicate that the disease is epidemic in the cities and surrounding areas but much smaller in the rural areas, said Dr. Nathan Clumeck of St. Pierre University Hospital in Brussels, the main organizer of the meeting.

"The African governments have to understand that if we are going to help them control the epidemic we need national surveillance statistics of all cases," he said. "We need to know where AIDS originated, why it is spreading in central Africa, especially in the cities, and why it is heterosexually transmitted."

In the U.S. and Europe, AIDS is primarily a disease of homosexuals, bisexuals and intravenous drug abusers, although it is beginning to spread into the heterosexual population. In Africa, it is a heterosexual disease.

Reports presented at the meeting indicate that AIDS in central Africa is primarily spread through routine sexual intercourse and that the huge number of prostitutes there serve as a basic reservoir for the disease.

Preliminary studies have revealed that in some areas in central Africa 80 percent of the prostitutes carry antibodies for the AIDS virus, which means that they have been infected with the virus and can transmit it to others.

Sexually transmitted diseases are rampant in many central African countries, said Herbert Nsanze, formerly of Nairobi, Kenya, and now at the Fiji School of Medicine.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta estimates that for every case of AIDS there are 5 to 10 cases of a lesser form of the disease called AIDS related complex and 50 to 100 people who carry the virus without having symptoms. It is estimated that 1 million to 2 million Americans have been exposed to the virus.

Recent studies show that 10 to 25 percent of the people who have had AIDS antibodies for up to six years go on to develop the disease, said CDC's Dr. Donald Francis.

Scientists trying to track down the cause of AIDS have found new evidence that it may have originated from a virus commonly found in African green monkeys.

The virus, identified as STLV-III, is similar to HTLV-III, the human AIDS virus, and causes an AIDS-like disease in Rhesus monkeys, said Dr. Max Essex of the Harvard School of Public Health.

It is possible that the green monkey virus underwent a malignant genetic change and was transmitted to humans through a bite, he said. The virulent virus may be the cause of AIDS and then somehow was spread to U.S. homosexuals, he said.

Tracking the virus may provide clues for a vaccine, he said. The normal green monkey virus appears to protect the monkeys against AIDS, and people in Senegal and Dakar who are also infected with the normal virus do not seem to get AIDS, Essex said.

"Maybe this will teach us a lesson about how to approach the development of an AIDS vaccine," he said. The normal green monkey virus may provide immunity against the AIDS virus just like the cowpox organism from cows protected people against smallpox, he said.

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