Johannesburg: The global HIV pandemic started in the 1920s in Kinshasa, capital of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to a study published by the journal Science.


HIV is known to have been transmitted from primates and apes to humans at least 13 times, probably through the hunting or handling of bush meat, according to researchers from Oxford University, who participated in the study.


But only one of those transmissions led to the human pandemic that has infected almost 75 million people, the university said in a press release.


In the 1920s, when Congo was still under Belgian colonial rule, the city of Kinshasa was expanding rapidly.