The woman who smuggled HIV into Bulgaria in her handbag

In 1985, at the height of the Cold War, Bulgaria was a strictly controlled communist dictatorship.

It was also facing a wave of infection and death caused by a mysterious new virus. The authorities refused to recognise the threat of HIV and AIDS, so one of Bulgaria’s virologists took the initiative.

In this programme for World Aids Day, Professor Radka Argirova tells Janet Barrie how she smuggled the live HIV virus back from Germany to start testing in Bulgaria for the first time.

(Photo: Professor Radka Argirova in her laboratory. Credit: BBC)