Didge, from what my understanding is (and please forgive me if I am wrong but you are talking to Mrs. Paranoia aka "eats this medical stuff up" lol!) Anyways I understood that the HIV virus is not capable of being carried by insects. It has to be homosapien if I remember correctly.
I read that after more than a decade of investigation and research, entomologists and medical scientists have found no evidence that mosquitoes or any other insects transmit HIV—the AIDS virus. In the case of mosquitoes, for instance, the insect’s mouth parts are not like a syringe with a single opening through which blood could be reinjected. Rather, mosquitoes draw blood in through one passage while delivering saliva through another. Then, explains an HIV specialist with the District Health Management Team in Mongu, Zambia, the mosquito’s digestive system breaks down the blood, destroying the virus. HIV is not found in insect feces. And unlike malaria parasites, HIV does not get into the mosquito’s salivary glands. To acquire HIV, a person must be exposed to a large number of infectious particles. If a mosquito’s meal is interrupted and it flies directly to another victim, any amount of blood that might remain on its mouth parts would be too small to be significant. According to experts, even swatting a mosquito filled with HIV-positive blood over an open wound would not cause HIV infection.
Mosquitos pass a few diseases to humans ... But I haven't heard that HIV is one of them.
I haven't heard of leaches passing diseases, at all. Either they don't, or it hasn't caused an epidemic large enough to be reported, in modern times.
Good question Didge, I had to search for answers, this ones from the ncbi site concerning mossies:-
There are two ways blood feeding arthropods can spread disease, mechanically, by simple transfer of virus between hosts by contaminated mouth parts, or, biologically, which would require virus replication in arthropod tissues (especially salivary glands). There are some important factors which have proven that AIDS is not transmitted by mosquito bite. These factors are: (1) AIDS virus can not replicate inside the mosquito, bed bug, flea, or other blood sucking insect and the lack of replication of HIV in arthropod cells due to lack of T4 antigen on cell surface, and (2) it is unlikely that HIV is transmitted by insects, given the low infectivity of HIV and the short survival of the virus in the mosquito. HIV appears to be much less easily transmitted probably due to lower titers of virus in body fluids. So, on the basis of experimental evidence and probability estimates, it has been concluded that the likelihood of mechanical or biological transmission of HIV by insects is "virtually non-existent."
However, the leech is different, also from the ncbi site for the full document click on link :-
In African leeches from Cameroon, blood was serologically positive for human immunodeficiency virus, and Hepatatis B. Consequently, the leech is a potential vector of many pathogens, especially in regions with an endemic spread of human and/or animal pathogens.
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