The deadly AIDS virus began after a hunter became infected with blood from a chimpanzee that was carrying the disease as far back as 1908, according to a new book.
The hunter was wounded while tracking the chimp in south east Cameroon and was the first known person to have the disease.
But it took more than 60 years before the killer virus first spread to the US when infected blood used in transfusions was imported from Haiti.
It had been widely thought that a Canadian flight attendant called Gaetan Dugas was responsible for the spread of AIDS in America.
His extensive travel and large number of gay partners led him to being labeled ‘Patient Zero” who was responsible for bringing the disease to the US.
Doctors in San Francisco were first to notice the spread of flu like symptoms among homosexuals in the city that led to a number of deaths.
By the end of the decade more than 60,000 people in the US had died and the disease rapidly spread to the UK and Europe.
But far from being a modern disease a new book claims AIDS was already around at the turn of the 20th century in Africa.