The researchers involved in Projet SIDA envisioned the project as an antidote to the typical "safari research" done by uninvolved Western scientists. During the mid to late-1980s, many U.S. and European projects were concerned with proving that HIV-1, which had only been isolated and proven to be associated with AIDS in the summer of 1983, could be transmitted through heterosexual intercourse. Unlike other North American projects, Projet SIDA did not intend to prove the heterosexual transmission of AIDS, but rather identify how AIDS spread within a Central African context. The project's early studies responded to local concerns of prevalence among Mama Yemo Hospital staff, identifying risk groups within Kinshasa, and examining household transmission.
