Sunday 21:29:13
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At the same time, airline deregulation in the United States during the late 1970's launched the "cheap fare competitions" among the domestic airline companies. Soon, national carriers of other countries joined the "air fare price war competition". The "jumbo jet" was born, allowing even more tourists to travel faster and farther.
The above factors, coupled with the booming worldwide economy in the 1980's, made international travel affordable to many people. European cities became popular destinations for Americans and other foreign nationals; in turn New York and San Francisco were favorite destinations in the United States. Other exotic destinations, like Asia, the Caribbean, South America have become more affordable and thus accessible also to many more travelers.
World tourism has become the lifeblood of many nations, especially the developing countries. Even many Western countries but especially the less developed countries became dependent on the foreign currencies that the tourists spent. National governments, of even the poorest countries, encouraged developments of "tourist destinations" and spent scarce resources to provide international standard hotels and entertainment facilities for the increasingly discriminating and demanding tourists.
Then came
Initial world reaction to AIDS. Peoples in other parts of the world -- who suffered much and continue to bear the legacies of Western colonialism -- considered
There were initial proposals to institute HIV screening of entering foreigners. But, with a deluge of travelers, it became apparent that routine universal HIV screening was not a feasible option. Even if there was any resolve to do so, there was no reliable, fast and cheap HIV screening test available during the early 1980's. More important, most countries have become so dependent on the foreign currencies spent by tourists. The poor countries especially could not jeopardize this much needed source of national income by antagonizing tourists with "AIDS screening".
The above conditions were conducive for the worldwide spread of
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By the mid 1980's, early evidence indicated that HIV infection and AIDS had begun to spread in other non-Western countries. HIV infection begun early in the early 1980's in Latin America, especially in some of the Caribbean countries, like Haiti. In Africa, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, evidence suggested the presence of the disease by the mid 1980's and achieved epidemic proportions by the late 1980's. The AIDS epidemic was more slow to invade Asia and took hold only in the 1990's. The major epidemics occurred first in Thailand and India followed by Vietnam, Myanmar, and Cambodia.
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Please click on AIDS Primer, if you do not see the A-Z navigation links, specific for this section. This page is a part of a much larger website -- "Treasures of the Internet" -- that includes other health-related sections, as well as other more general sections on the arts, literature, science, etc. If this is your first visit, please read "navigating this site", for further guidance.