AIDS is devastating many areas of sub-Saharan Africa.
Over twelve million people in the region have died of AIDS in the past decade.
Over 29.4 million people in the region are infected with HIV.
Of the eleven people who contract HIV "each minute" in the world, ten live in sub-Saharan Africa.

With no known cure and no vaccine as yet available, an estimated 600f Africans under the age of eighteen today will be dead of AIDS before they reach 45 years of age. Most prevention programs have largely failed because the research behind them has focused primarily on "risk groups," behavioral change models, and flawed understandings of cultural practices.

"HIV and AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology" seeks to shift the predominant understandings generated by biomedical and epidemiological research, recognizing that HIV transmission in sub-Saharan Africa is a complex and regionally-specific phenomenon rooted in local economies, deepening poverty, migration, gender, war, global economies, and cultural politics. International contributors from across the social sciences further our understanding of AIDS by looking at the epidemic from angles often inadequately explored. Ultimately, the underlying message of every contributor to this book is that AIDS is not going to diminish in Africa until social, gender, and economic inequities are addressed in meaningful ways.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when HIV first entered the world's blood supply, more than half of the 17,000 hemophiliacs in the United States became infected with the AIDS-causing virus. In Blood on Their Hands, attorney Eric Weinberg and journalist Donna Shaw provide an insider's look at the epic legal battle fought over what has been called the worst medically induced epidemic in the history of modern medicine and one of the twentieth century's worst public health disasters. As one of the key members of the legal team involved with the class action suit filed by the infected, Eric Weinberg was faced with a daunting task: prove the negligence of a powerful, well-connected global industry with billions of dollars in sales at risk. Weinberg and fellow attorneys representing AIDS-stricken hemophiliacs also had to explain why governments and regulators from several nations had failed their clients. Blood on Their Hands underscores how heroic clients, even as they were nearing death, fought tirelessly for justice.

With a Foreword by Desmond Tutu, Generation at Risk brings insightful perspectives from experienced practitioners and researchers on how a better future can be secured for the millions of children who are being orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. The current situation of these children is grim, and while there has been significant action by governments, international organizations, religious bodies, and non-governmental organizations, the vast majority of children made vulnerable by AIDS have not benefited from any assistance beyond their own extended family and community. A Generation at Risk explains in straightforward terms what is required to fill this gap. The book addresses what needs to be done in the areas of education, community mobilization and capacity building, economic strengthening at household and community levels, psychosocial support, and the protection of children and the fulfilment of their rights.

Conversations between AIDS counsellors and their clients bring delicate and potentially threatening issues into play. In this study Anssi Perakyla applies the principles of conversation analysis to his exploration of AIDS counselling, using data from video-recorded counselling sessions in a London teaching hospital. He meticulously analyses this data to show how various questioning techniques, in this case arising from the Milan School Family Systems theory, operate in these situations, and how counsellors attempt through the design and placement of their questions to achieve the cooperation of their clients, with varying success. His conclusions provide a timely and illuminating insight into the management of a sensitive topic through various techniques of indirectness.

A Generation at Risk brings up-to-date and insightful perspectives from experienced practitioners and researchers on how a better future can be secured for the millions of children who are being orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. The current situation of these children is grim, and while there has been significant action in the last few years by governments, international organizations, religious bodies, and nongovernmental organizations, the vast majority of children made vulnerable by AIDS have not benefited from any assistance from beyond their own extended family and community. A Generation at Risk explains in straightforward terms what is required to fill this gap. The book addresses what needs to be done in the areas of education, community mobilization and capacity building, economic strengthening at household and community levels, psychosocial support, and the protection of children and the fulfillment of their rights.

Winner, 2018 Best Atlantic Published Book AwardA National BestsellerBy the time the AIDS pandemic in Africa had reached its height in the early 2000s, millions of children had been orphaned. In the face of overwhelming loss, the grandmothers of Africa stepped in to hold families and communities together. Author Joanna Henry and photographer Alexis MacDonald visited eight African countries, interviewing and photographing hundreds of grandmothers (including Sarah Obama, Barack Obama's grandmother) who are reclaiming hope and resurrecting lives. The extraordinary images and stories of resourceful women fighting for a better future make Powered by Love an inspiration for everyone.Writes journalist-social activist Michele Landsberg, "We thought we knew what was happening in Africa when the AIDS pandemic raged across the continent, sweeping away 35 million lives. But we never knew it the way this book reveals it, in the shockingly intimate voices of the grandmothers who had to save the abandoned children when no one else was left alive. These voices will leap straight into your heart. Their unguarded faces, in portraits that glow with character, pain and humour, will captivate you."In 2006, the Stephen Lewis Foundation launched a campaign to engage Canadian grandmothers to support their African sisters. The Grandmothers Campaign, now a movement 10,000 strong, has raised over $25 million that has gone directly into the hands of African grandmothers and their grassroots organizations. Powered by Love joins this campaign by telling the story of these indomitable women and by directing all royalties from the sale of the book to African grandmothers raising children orphaned by AIDS.

Early in the 1980s AIDS epidemic, six gay activists created one of the most iconic and lasting images that would come to symbolize a movement: a protest poster of a pink triangle with the words "Silence = Death." The graphic and the slogan still resonate today, often used-and misused-to brand the entire movement. Cofounder of the collective Silence = Death and member of the art collective Gran Fury, Avram Finkelstein tells the story of how his work and other protest artwork associated with the early years of the pandemic were created. In writing about art and AIDS activism, the formation of collectives, and the political process, Finkelstein reveals a different side of the traditional HIV/AIDS history, told twenty-five years later, and offers a creative toolbox for those who want to learn how to save lives through activism and making art.

Dawning Answers charts the legacy of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic to the theory and practice of public health. Richly detailed chapters describe how advances in techniques and startegies to monitor health events, develop public policy, set funding priorities, mobilize communities, support the adoption of safer behaviors, ensure access to needed prevention and treatment services, and involve affected populations in public health research, intervention, and evaluation, all owe a substantial debt to those who have adapted, redefined, and extended these techniques and startegies in response to HIV/AIDS. The book offers thoughtful analyses from experts in various fields and disciplines. Although most of the examples reflect the U.S. experience, relevant examples from other countries are cited, and an entire chapter is devoted to the evolving impact of HIV/AIDS on global health and development. Devastating as the losses from AIDS have been, the many public health lessons learned as a result of the epidemic have positively influenced other domains of public health and will continue to exert an influence on new approaches to health assessment, policy development, and assurance.

An international team of eighteen doctors, philosophers, and lawyers present a fresh and thorough discussion of the ethical, legal, and social issues raised by testing and screening for HIV and AIDS. They aim to point the way to practical advances but also to give an accessible guide for those new to the debate.

For over a hundred years, millions of Americans have joined together to fight a common enemy by campaigning against diseases. In Common Enemies, Rachel Kahn Best asks why disease campaigns have dominated a century of American philanthropy and health policy and how the fixation on diseases shapes efforts to improve lives. Combining quantitative and qualitative analyses in an unprecedented history of disease politics, Best shows that to achieve consensus, disease campaigns tend to neglect stigmatized diseases and avoid controversial goals. But despite their limitations, disease campaigns do not crowd out efforts to solve other problems. Instead, they teach Americans to give and volunteer and build up public health infrastructure, bringing us together to solve problems and improve our lives.

The late-20th century has witnessed dramatic technological developments in biomedical science and the delivery of health care, and these developments have brought with them important social changes. All too often ethical analysis has lagged behind these changes. The purpose of the "Issues in Biomedical Ethics" series is to provide lively, up-to-date, and authoritative studies for the increasingly large and diverse readership concerned with issues in biomedical ethics - not just health care trainees and professionals, but also social scientists, philosophers, lawyers, social workers and legislators. The focus of this volume is the testing and screening for HIV and AIDS which gives rise to ethical, legal and social issues of the most controversial and delicate kind. An international team of 18 doctors, philosophers and lawyers present a fresh and thorough discussion of these issues; they aim to show the way to practical advances but also to give an accessible guide to the debates for readers new to them. The contributors pay particular attention to the sensitive nature of the information yielded by a test for HIV antibody. They consider such questions as these: Are we under an obliga

This book examines the issues surrounding the growing epidemic of women and children with HIV and AIDS. It explores such issues as discrimination in employment, housing, health care, and education, and looks at medical testing, confidentiality, reproductive freedom, income assistance, child welfare, and child custody. Focusing on the federal and state statutes that protect women and children with HIV and AIDS from discrimination, this book also examines the statutes that govern the operation of the public systems to which significant numbers of women with HIV and AIDS turn to for financial and medical needs, housing assistance, and social services. Clear and accessible, this book is vital reading for anyone interested in learning more about the policies, provisions, and legal concepts surrounding this issue.

Historically, the fields of public health and human rights have remained largely separate. The AIDS pandemic, however, made it clear that a complex relationship exists between the two fields. Women and children have proven to be extremely vulnerable to infection with HIV due to their inability to protect themselves in intimate relationships, their sexual exploitation, and their lack of economic and educational alternatives. On the other hand, coercive government policies aimed at controlling the AIDS pandemic often infringe on the rights of individuals known or suspected of having AIDS, and decrease the effectiveness of public health measures. Protecting and promoting human rights is becoming one of the key means of preserving the health of individuals and populations. A penetrating analysis of the close relationship between public health and human rights, this book makes a compelling case for synergy between the two fields. Using the AIDS pandemic as a lens, the authors demonstrate that human health cannot be maintained without respect for the dignity and rights of persons, and that human rights cannot be deemed adequate and comprehensive without ensuring the health of individuals and populations. In the course of their analysis, Gostin and Lazzarini tackle some of the most vexing issues of our time, including the universality of human rights and the counter-claims of cultural relativity. Taking a cue from environmental impact assessments, they propose a human rights impact assessment for examining health policies. Such a tool will be invaluable for evaluating real-world public health problems and is bound to become essential for teaching human rights in schools of public health, medicine, government, and law. The volume critically examines such issues as HIV testing, screening, partner notification, isolation, quarantine, and criminalization of persons with HIV/AIDS, all within the framework of international human rights law. The authors evaluate the public health effects of a wide range of AIDS policies in developed as well as developing countries. The role of women in society receives special emphasis. Finally, the book presents three case histories that are important in the HIV/AIDS pandemic: discrimination and the transmission of HIV and tuberculosis in an occupational health care setting; breast feeding in the least developed countries; and confidentiality and the right of sexual partners to know of potential exposure to HIV. The cases challenge readers with some of the complex questions facing policy-makers, scientists, and public health professionals, and exemplify a method for analysing these problems from a human rights perspective. Gostin and Lazzarini have written a book that will be a valuable addition to the libraries of public health teachers and practitioners, legal scholars, bioethicists, policy makers, and public rights activists.

Conversations between AIDS counsellors and their clients bring delicate and potentially threatening issues into play. In this study Anssi Perakyla applies the principles of conversation analysis to his exploration of AIDS counselling, using data from video-recorded counselling sessions in a London teaching hospital. He meticulously analyses this data to show how various questioning techniques, in this case arising from the Milan School Family Systems theory, operate in these situations, and how counsellors attempt through the design and placement of their questions to achieve the cooperation of their clients, with varying success. His conclusions provide a timely and illuminating insight into the management of a sensitive topic through various techniques of indirectness.

The impact of AIDS cannot be adequately measured by epidemiology alone. As the editors of this volume argue, AIDS must be understood as a 'disease of society', which is challenging and changing society profoundly. Numerous books on AIDS have looked at the ways in which our social institutions, norms and values have determined how the disease has been dealt with, but this book, first published in 1991, examines the ways in which AIDS is, in turn, changing our social institutions, norms and values. It explores the impact of AIDS on the arts and popular entertainment, on our concept of family, on government and legal institutions and on the health services, and the ways in which AIDS is forcing society to come to terms with longstanding tensions between community values and individual rights.

The first ever book by music legend and author of the bestselling Me, Sir Elton John: a personal, passionate and illuminating journey of his fight to end the AIDS epidemic. In the 1980s, Elton John saw friend after friend, loved one after loved one, perish needlessly from AIDS. In the midst of the plague, he befriended Ryan White, a young Indiana boy ostracized by his town and his school because of the HIV infection he had contracted from a blood transfusion. Ryan's inspiring life and devastating death led Elton to two realizations: His own life was a mess. And he had to do something to help stop the AIDS crisis. Since then, Elton has dedicated himself to overcoming the plague and the stigma of AIDS. He has done this through the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which has raised and donated $275 million to date to fighting the disease worldwide. Love Is The Cure is Elton's personal account of his life during the AIDS epidemic, including stories of his close friendships with Ryan White, Freddie Mercury, Princess Diana, Elizabeth Taylor, and others, and the story of the Elton John AIDS Foundation. With powerful conviction and emotional force, Elton conveys the personal toll AIDS has taken on his life - and his infinite determination to stop its spread. Elton writes, 'This is a disease that must be cured not by a miraculous vaccine, but by changing hearts and minds, and through a collective effort to break down social barriers and to build bridges of compassion. Why are we not doing more? This is a question I have thought deeply about, and wish to answer - and help to change - by writing this book.' The sale of Love Is the Cure will benefit the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

Changing the course of AIDS is an in-depth evaluation of a new and exciting way to create the kind of much-needed behavioral change that could affect the course of the global health crisis of HIV/AIDS. This case study from the South African HIV/AIDS epidemic demonstrates that regular workers serving as peer educators can be as - or even more - effective agents of behavioral change than experts who lecture about the facts and so-called appropriate health care behavior. After spending six years researching the response of large South African companies to the epidemic that is decimating their workforce as well as South African communities, David Dickinson describes the promise of this grassroots intervention - workers educating one another in the workplace and community - and the limitations of traditional top-down strategies. Dickinson's book takes us right into the South African workplace to show how effective and yet enormously complex peer education really is. We see what it means when workers directly tackle the kinds of sexual, gender, religious, ethnic, and broader social and political taboos that make behavior change so difficult, particularly when that behavior involves sex and sexuality. Dickinson's findings show that people who are not officially health care experts or even health care workers can be skilled and effective educators. In this book we see why peer education has so much to offer grappling with the HIV/AIDS epidemic and why those interested in changing behaviors to ameliorate other health problems such as obesity, alcoholism, and substance abuse have so much to learn from the South African example.

"This book is a fabulous read--ethnographically rich, theoretically engaged, and emotionally and intellectually captivating. The first major ethnographic study of its kind, the text is very clearly written and accessible. Hyde does a majestic job of drawing the reader into the places and practices described, bringing to stunning life the politics of AIDS on a border region."--Ralph Litzinger, author of "Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging"
""Eating Spring Rice" is a poignant analysis and welcomed contribution to both China Studies and to the analysis of public health in the context of the evolution of an AIDS epidemic. As a public health practitioner and anthropologist, Sandra Hyde has a keen eye and makes a compelling case for what might be done to improve the health of individuals. Hyde shows how the particular modes that social liberalization takes in China will have unforseeable consequences, offering a vivid picture that requires us to rethink public health and epidemics in radically new ways."--Cindy Patton, author of "Globalizing AIDS"
"Sandra Hyde brings the fruits of a decade of intensive engagement in China's Yunnan province to this beautifully crafted account of the everyday practices by which AIDS and its social imaginary remake ethnicity, region, gender, and governance. Bridging medical anthropology and public health, and debates on the organization of sex work and on the Chinese politics of race and place, "Eating Spring Rice" should be required reading for anyone who would address the impact of emergent plague measures (SARS, avian flu) in China or elsewhere"--Lawrence Cohen, author of "No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, The Bad Family, andOther Modern Things"
"Sandra Hyde's analysis of gender, class, language, and cultural politics is as trenchant as her challenge to China-centrism is timely. A remarkable critical accomplishment."--Rey Chow, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Brown University

Almost four decades after the discovery of HIV/AIDS, the world continues to grapple with this public health challenge. Thinking Differently about HIV/AIDS explores the limits of mainstream approaches to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and challenges readers to develop alternate solutions, emphasizing the value of critical social science perspectives. The contributors investigate traditions of inquiry - governmentality studies, institutional ethnography, and Indigenous knowledges, among others - to determine what these perspectives can bring to HIV/AIDS research, policy, and programming. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how and why critical social science is necessary for rethinking research and action required to address the epidemic.

In 2008 it was believed that HIV/AIDS was without doubt the worst epidemic to hit humankind since the Black Death. The first case was identified in 1981; by 2004 it was estimated that about 40 million people were living with the disease, and about 20 million had died. Yet the outlook today is a little brighter. Although HIV/ AIDS continues to be a pressing public health issue the epidemic has stabilised globally, and it has become evident it is not, nor will it be, a global issue. The worst affected regions are southern and eastern Africa. Elsewhere, HIV is found in specific, usually, marginalised populations, for example intravenous drug users in Russia. Although there still remains no cure for HIV, there have been unprecedented breakthroughs in understanding the disease and developing drugs. Access to treatment over the last ten years has turned AIDS into a chronic disease, although it is still a challenge to make antiviral treatment available to all that require it. We also have new evidence that treatment greatly reduces infectivity, and this has led to the movement of 'Treatment as Prevention'. In this Very Short Introduction Alan Whiteside provides an introduction to AIDS, tackling the science, the international and local politics, the demographics, and the devastating consequences of the disease. He looks at the problems a developing international 'AIDS fatigue' poses to funding for sufferers, but also shows how domestic resources are increasingly being mobilised, despite the stabilisation of international funding. Finally Whiteside considers how the need to understand and change our behaviour has caused us to reassess what it means to be human and how we should operate in the globalizing world. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Syringe exchange programs and safe injection services are outside-the-box interventions increasingly being used by governments, nonprofits and citizens to address dire issues percolating in tandem with America's burgeoning opioid epidemic. People who inject drugs (PWID)-almost a million Americans annually-commonly use painkillers such as heroin and fentanyl, as well as methamphetamine, benzodiazepines, barbiturates and cocaine. Yet the users themselves are often obscured or marginalized by the bigger picture. This collection of essays covers policies and practices aimed at preventing both opioid-related deaths and related infections of hepatitis and HIV.

Drawing attention to the existence in France of an AIDS literature from 1985 to 1988, before AIDS became either a widly recognised genre or a culturally influential form of writing, this predominately critical literary study is informed by gender studies and psychoanalytic criticism in its readings of individual texts. Interwoven with contextual information, the book provides sympathetic readings of courageous writers who have been unfairly criticised, like Dreuilhe, or forgotten like Simonin, or like Aron, never properly understood.

Facing a Pandemic traces the history and spread of the HIV/AIDS virus in Africa and its impact on African society and public policy before considering new priorities needed to combat the pandemic. The central argument is that the theological motif of the image of God invites a prophetic critique of the social environment in which HIV/AIDS thrives and calls for a praxis of love and compassion.

In the Eye of the Storm tells the remarkable story of AIDS volunteers who engaged in a struggle for life against death. The people who volunteered to help during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s provided compassion and support to heavily stigmatised people. These volunteers provided in-home care for the sick and dying, staffed needle exchanges and telephone help-lines, produced educational resources, served on boards of management, and provided friendship and practical support, among many other roles. They helped people affected by the virus to navigate a medical system that in preceding decades had been openly hostile towards the marginalised communities of homosexuals, drug users and sex workers. In the process, volunteering left and indelible mark on the lives and outlooks of these volunteers. For the first time, by focusing on individual life stories, this book explores the crucial role of the men and women who volunteered at at time of disaster. Despite their critical role, they have not been sufficiently recognised. Through their stories, drawn from oral histories conducted by the authors, we see how those on the front-line navigated and survived a devastating epidemic, and the long-term impact of those grim years of illness, death and loss.

In the late 1980s, after a decade spent engaged in more routine interest-group politics, thousands of lesbians and gay men responded to the AIDS crisis by defiantly and dramatically taking to the streets. But by the early 1990s, the organization they founded, ACT UP, was no more--even as the AIDS epidemic raged on. Weaving together interviews with activists, extensive research, and reflections on the author's time as a member of the organization, "Moving Politics" is the first book to chronicle the rise and fall of ACT UP, highlighting a key factor in its trajectory: emotion.

Surprisingly overlooked by many scholars of social movements, emotion, Gould argues, plays a fundamental role in political activism. From anger to hope, pride to shame, and solidarity to despair, feelings played a significant part in ACT UP's provocative style of protest, which included raucous demonstrations, die-ins, and other kinds of street theater. Detailing the movement's public triumphs and private setbacks, "Moving Politics" is the definitive account of ACT UP's origin, development, and decline as well as a searching look at the role of emotion in contentious politics.