This book analyzes successive governments' management of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. The book covers the years 1982-2005, using expert thinking regarding public policy making to identify gaps in the public sector's handling of the epidemic. It highlights critical lessons for policy makers and other public health managers.
HIV/AIDS is a catastrophe globally but nowhere more so than in sub-Saharan Africa, which in 2008 accounted for 67 percent of cases worldwide and 91 percent of new infections. The Institute of Medicine recommends that the United States and African nations move toward a strategy of shared responsibility such that these nations are empowered to take ownership of their HIV/AIDS problem and work to solve it.
The AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to affect all facets of life throughout the subcontinent. Deaths related to AIDS have driven down the life expectancy rate of residents in Zambia, Kenya, and Uganda with far-reaching implications. This book details the current state of the AIDS epidemic in Africa and what is known about the behaviors that contribute to the transmission of the HIV infection. It lays out what research is needed and what is necessary to design more effective prevention programs.
An estimated forty million people carry the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and five million more become newly infected annually. In recent years, many HIV-infected patients in wealthy nations have enjoyed significantly longer, good-quality lives as a result of antiretroviral therapy (ART). However, most infected individuals live in the poorest regions of the world, where ART is virtually nonexistent. The consequent death toll in these regionsâ€"especially sub-Saharan Africaâ€"is begetting economic and social collapse. To inform the multiple efforts underway to deploy antiretroviral drugs in resource-poor settings, the Institute of Medicine committee was asked to conduct an independent review and assessment of rapid scale-up ART programs. It was also asked to identify the components of effective implementation programs. At the heart of the committee's report lie five imperatives: Immediately introduce and scale up ART programs in resource-poor settings. Devise strategies to ensure high levels of patient adherence to complicated treatment regimens. Rapidly address human-resource shortages to avoid the failure of program implementation. Continuously monitor and evaluate the programs to form the most effective guidelines and treatment regimens for each population. Prepare to sustain ART for decades.
"Human health is shaped by the interactions between social and ecological systems. States of Disease advances a social ecology of health framework to demonstrate how historical spatial formations contribute to contemporary vulnerabilities to disease and the possibilities for health justice. The book examines how managed HIV in South Africa is being transformed with expanded access to antiretroviral therapy, and how environmental health in northern Botswana is shifting due to global climate change and flooding variability. These cases demonstrate how the political environmental context shapes the ways in which health is embodied, experienced, and managed"--Provided by publisher.
The HIV epidemic remains one of the most challenging of modern times, despite the enormous promise of anti-retroviral treatment. This timely book takes a critical look at HIV/AIDS in the context of South Africa, the country with the largest HIV epidemic in the world. Drawing on feminist science and technology studies and a close analysis of a range of textual sources, Politics in the Making of HIV/AIDS in South Africa tracks how the disease has been formed and transformed through political struggles. It illuminates the ways these struggles have also generated new selves for those living with HIV. In conducting this enquiry, the book addresses pressing questions about the politics of public health, the ethics of biological citizenship, and agency and the making of neoliberal subjects. It should appeal to scholars and students with interests in the sociology of health and medicine, the body in society, science and technology studies, and public health.
An examination of post-apartheid politics This volume explores some of the key features of popular politics and resistance before and after 1994. It looks at continuities and changes in the forms of struggle and ideologies involved, as well as the significance of post-apartheid grassroots politics. Is this a new form of politics or does it stand as a direct descendent of the insurrectionary impulses of the late apartheid era? Posing questions about continuity and change before and after 1994 raises key issues concerning the nature of power and poverty in the country. Contributors suggest that expressions of popular politics are deeply set within South African political culture and still have the capacity to influence political outcomes. The introduction by William Beinart links the papers together, places them in context of recent literature on popular politics and 'history from below' and summarises their main findings, supporting the argument that popular politics outside of the party system remain significant in South Africa and help influence national politics. The roots of this collection lie in post-graduate student research conducted at the University of Oxford in the early twenty-first century.
Mortal Combat is a history of AIDS policy in South Africa. It exposes the strategy and tactics of AIDS denialists and focuses on the struggle for antiretrovirals to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV and to extend the lives of people living with AIDS. Nicoli Nattrass is Director of the AIDS and Society Research Unit and Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town. Book jacket.
Current data and trends in morbidity and mortality for the sub-Saharan Region as presented in this new edition reflect the heavy toll that HIV/AIDS has had on health indicators, leading to either a stalling or reversal of the gains made, not just for communicable disorders, but for cancers, as well as mental and neurological disorders.