The first case of HIV was in the Belgian Congo in 1959

A group of researchers said the first case of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was a man who lived in what was then the Belgian Congo in 1959.

The man was a Bantu who lived in Leopoldville, now the city of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said in a press conference David Ho and his colleagues at the Research CenterAaron Diamond AIDS in New York.

The scientists explained that the samples appeared as an ancestor of several HIV subtypes found worldwide. Research suggests that HIV "evolved from a single introduction to the African population in a period well before 1959."