HIV/AIDS affects women worldwide. Elderly women bear a disproportionate burden of caring for those who are afflicted with the disease, while young women increasingly comprise the majority of new HIV cases. Intervention programs often fail to take into account the particular situations and behaviors that make women more vulnerable than men. Though policy debates increasingly include women and gender considerations, funds and resources for women, especially those already suffering with HIV/AIDS, remain inadequate.

"Women's Experiences with HIV/AIDS" gives voice to the experience of individual women whose personal stories reveal the daily struggles and concerns that fill their lives, but are ignored in the larger dialogues about HIV/AIDS. Women and men from diverse backgrounds discuss the differences between women within and across cultures and how particular traditions and attitudes can affect the prevention of, or vulnerability to, HIV/AIDS. The authors address not only women's empirical experiences, but also their personal feelings, beliefs, and expectations as reflected in their narratives.

Approaching the issue from several disciplines, "Women's Experiences with HIV/AIDS" paves the way for the empowerment of women by bringing them directly into the debates concerned with their protection against HIV/AIDS. This collection, edited by two well-known scholars in this field, provides a much-needed critical examination of the interventions and policies that do not yet fully address the needs and limitations of women and girls suffering with, or confronting the possibility of, infection.

It is now forty years since the discovery of AIDS, but its origins continue to puzzle doctors, scientists and patients. Inspired by his own experiences working as a physician in a bush hospital in Zaire, Jacques Pepin looks back to the early twentieth-century events in central Africa that triggered the emergence of HIV/AIDS and traces its subsequent development into the most dramatic and destructive epidemic of modern times. He shows how the disease was first transmitted from chimpanzees to man and then how military campaigns, urbanisation, prostitution and large-scale colonial medical interventions intended to eradicate tropical diseases combined to disastrous effect to fuel the spread of the virus from its origins in Leopoldville to the rest of Africa, the Caribbean and ultimately worldwide. This is an essential perspective on HIV/AIDS and on the lessons that must be learned as the world faces another pandemic.

When addressing the factors shaping HIV prevention programs in sub-Saharan Africa, it is important to consider the role of family planning programs that preceded the epidemic. In this book, Rachel Sullivan Robinson argues that both globally and locally, those working to prevent HIV borrowed and adapted resources, discourses, and strategies used for family planning. By combining statistical analysis of all sub-Saharan African countries with comparative case studies of Malawi, Nigeria, and Senegal, Robinson also shows that the nature of countries' interactions with the international community, the strength and composition of civil society, and the existence of technocratic leaders influenced variation in responses to HIV. Specifically, historical and existing relationships with outside actors, the nature of nongovernmental organizations, and perceptions of previous interventions strongly structured later health interventions through processes of path dependence and policy feedback. This book will be of great use to scholars and practitioners interested in global health, international development, African studies and political science.

Since the early days of the AIDS epidemic, many bizarre and dangerous hypotheses have been advanced as to the origins of the disease. In this compelling book, Nicoli Nattrass explores the social and political factors prolonging the erroneous belief that the American government manufactured the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to be used as a biological weapon, as well as the myth’s consequences for behavior, especially within African American and black South African communities.

Contemporary AIDS denialism, the belief that HIV is harmless and that antiretroviral drugs are the true cause of AIDS, is a more insidious AIDS conspiracy theory. Advocates of this position make a “conspiratorial move” against HIV science by implying its methods cannot be trusted, and that untested, alternative therapies are safer than antiretrovirals. These claims are genuinely life-threatening, as tragically demonstrated in South Africa when the delay of antiretroviral treatment resulted in nearly 333,000 AIDS deaths and 180,000 HIV infections thatcould have been prevented – a tragedy of stunning proportion.

Nattrass identifies four symbolically powerful figures ensuring the lifespan of AIDS denialism: the hero scientist (dissident scientists who lend credibility to the movement), the cultropreneur (alternative therapists who exploit the conspiratorial move as a marketing mechanism), the living icon (individuals who claim to be living proof of AIDS denialism’s legitimacy), and the praise-singer (journalists who broadcast movement messages to the public). Nattrass describes how pro-science activists have fought back by deploying empirical evidence and political credibility to resist AIDS conspiracy theories, which is part of the crucial project to defend evidence-based medicine.

The new edition of this successful handbook provides a balance of evidence-based information on Genitourinary Medicine (GUM), including HIV/AIDS. It provides high quality, digestible clinical detail and also practical information on the ever-increasing medico-legal, ethical, and procedural issues of growing importance when dealing with these complex topics. Designed primarily for the trainee in GUM, it is also a valuable reference and resource for the specialist physician, nurse, and other professionals working in the field of sexual health. The new edition remains relevant to those working in this field and features practical enhanced sections on contraception and genital dermatology written by specialist contributors, and information for general practitioners in order to provide services for STIs. The book consists of three easy-to-follow sections. The first section deals with routine management within GUM; medico-legal and ethical issues, the standard patient, special situations, and routine clinical and laboratory processes that include simple flow chart guidance on common clinical presentations. The second section details GUM conditions in a disease-orientated style, including STIs and also other genitourinary problems that may present. The third section on HIV provides a contemporary epidemiological overview of this infection, basic viral biology and pathogenesis, a disease-orientated description of conditions both directly related and opportunistic, and their management and data on special situations such as pregnancy. Finally guidance on commonly used abbreviations is shown together with a useful resource directory for staff. In essence this handbook provides a wealth of simple and easy to follow information on STIs and the principles of providing a service including administrative and medico-legal issues that are sometimes difficult to locate. This book will be of global use to all those with an interest in sexual health whatever their level of expertise and wherever they may practice.

In the short, turbulent history of AIDS research and treatment, the boundaries between scientist insiders and lay outsiders have been crisscrossed to a degree never before seen in medical history. Steven Epstein's astute and readable investigation focuses on the critical question of "how certainty is constructed or deconstructed," leading us through the views of medical researchers, activists, policy makers, and others to discover how knowledge about AIDS emerges out of what he calls "credibility struggles." Epstein shows the extent to which AIDS research has been a social and political phenomenon and how the AIDS movement has transformed biomedical research practices through its capacity to garner credibility by novel strategies. Epstein finds that nonscientist AIDS activists have gained enough of a voice in the scientific world to shape NIH--sponsored research to a remarkable extent. Because of the blurring of roles and responsibilities, the production of biomedical knowledge about AIDS does not, he says, follow the pathways common to science; indeed, AIDS research can only be understood as a field that is unusually broad, public, and contested. He concludes by analyzing recent moves to democratize biomedicine, arguing that although AIDS activists have set the stage for new challenges to scientific authority, all social movements that seek to democratize expertise face unusual difficulties. Avoiding polemics and accusations, Epstein provides a benchmark account of the AIDS epidemic to date, one that will be as useful to activists, policy makers, and general readers as to sociologists, physicians, and scientists.

Drawing on a rich set of interviews and surveys, this book shows how the global AIDS treatment advocacy movement helped millions in the developing world gain access to life-saving medication. The movement achieved this by transforming the market for AIDS drugs from one which was 'low volume, high price' to one based on access for all. The authors suggest that a movement's ability to transform markets depends upon whether: (1) markets are contestable; (2) they have framed their arguments to resonate across their target audiences; (3) the movement itself has a coherent goal; (4) the costs are low, or the benefit-to-cost ratio is favourable; and, finally, (5) institutions are present to reward continued achievement of the new market principle. These insights are applied to a range of other cases including malaria, maternal mortality, water/diarrheal disease, non-communicable diseases, education, climate change, the ivory trade, sex trafficking and the Atlantic slave trade.

Das Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - AIDS - ist eines der gro/3ten medizinischen Probleme unserer Zeit. Der Erreger, das HTLV III/LA V-Virus, dtirfte in Afrika entstanden sein; die Krank- heit AIDS wurde in den Vereinigten Staaten erstmals bekannt und definiert; sie greift nun auch auf den europaischen Kontinent tiber. Arzte, Soziologen, Epidemiologen und nicht zuletzt auch Politiker sind durch diese Infektionskrankheit und ihre infauste Prognose mit meist todlichem Ausgang, vor aHem aber durch ihre enorm rasche, einer geometrischen Reihe folgende Ausbreitung zutiefst beunru- higt. Die Medien haben sich aus verschiedenen Motiven heraus intensiv mit AIDS beschaftigt, und eine gewisse Beunruhigung in der Bevolkerung, aber auch in der Arzteschaft se1bst ausge1ost. Am 20. April 1985 hat in Wien ein Symposium stattgefunden, das sich mit der Problematik von AIDS auseinandergesetzt hat. Erste Fachleute aus Osterreich haben tiber die "AIDS-Lage" berichtet und die Manuskripte ihrer Vortrage zur VerfUgung gestellt; daraus ist dieser Band entstanden. Sicherlich wird dieses Buch dazu beitragen, die Probleme der AIDS-Forschung, deren Ergebnisse sich stan dig andern und vermehren, besser zu verstehen. Unser Dank gilt vor aHem den Vortragenden und Autoren, au/3erdem der Firma Bender + Co fUr die finanzieHe Untersttitzung und dem Verlag fUr die rasche VerOffentlichung. Wien, im November 1985 F. Gschnait und K. Wolff Inhaltsverzeichnis Gschnait, F., Hutterer, J.: AIDS 1985: Ein Uberblick ........ .

Witchcraft and a Life in the New South Africa reconstructs the biography of an ordinary South African, Jimmy Mohale. Born in 1964, Jimmy came of age in rural South Africa during apartheid, then studied at university and worked as a teacher during the anti-apartheid struggle. In 2005, Jimmy died from an undiagnosed sickness, probably related to AIDS. Jimmy gradually came to see the unanticipated misfortune he experienced as a result of his father's witchcraft and sought remedies from diviners rather than from biomedical doctors. This study casts new light on scholarly understandings of the connections between South African politics, witchcraft and the AIDS pandemic.

By drawing on the latest discoveries in virology, microbiology, and immunology, Mirko Grmek depicts the AIDS epidemic not as an isolated incident but as part of the long, but far from peaceful, coexistence of humans and viruses.

A deeply personal account of Elton John's life during the era of AIDS and an inspiring call to action.
In the 1980s, Elton John saw friend after friend, loved one after loved one, perish needlessly from AIDS. He befriended Ryan White, a young Indiana boy ostracized because of his HIV infection. 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. The Elton John AIDS Foundation has raised and donated $275 million to date to fighting the disease worldwide. "Love Is the Cure" includes stories of Elton's close friendships with Ryan White, Freddie Mercury, Princess Diana, Elizabeth Taylor, and others, and the story of the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
Sales of "Love Is the Cure" benefit the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

This study brings together health-care professionals and scholars from a variety of disciplines who seek to understand, and prevent, the transmission of HIV. The biological and social factors concerned with the spread and impact of HIV/AIDS has resulted in dedicated research from each of the disciplines and provided unique insights into the disease. By assembling their insights in one multidisciplinary volume, this book provides a more complete picture of the complex disease, and demonstrates why preventing the spread of HIV will require interdisciplinary collaboration.

The worldwide impact of HIV/AIDS is well recognized. This book provides for the first time a thorough and critical overview of current aspects, recent developments, and trends in the formulation and drug delivery concerning anti-HIV microbicides by leading scientists in the field. Additionally, pertinent regulatory aspects and socioeconomical issues related to the subject are discussed. In the absence of a cure, prophylaxis represents a cornerstone in the battle against infection. One promising strategy comprises the use around the time of sexual intercourse of vaginal/rectal products containing antiviral compounds, termed microbicides. It is now recognized that specific development of drug dosage forms and/or drug delivery systems is an indispensable aspect for the success of microbicides. Different groups strived over the last decade to optimize the biophysical and technological performance of traditional dosage forms (gels, tablets, and suppositories) to fulfill the specificities of microbicides use, without neglecting users' preferences and affordability issues. Moreover, new formulation approaches, such as vaginal rings and films, nanotechnology-based systems, stimuli-sensitive formulations, targeted drug delivery systems, among others have been proposed and are currently undergoing pre-clinical or even clinical testing.

'I read the book in one go. I laughed and cried like a baby, and was transported back to a time of innocence, clouded by the enormity of the harsh reality . . . Just amazing' CATHERINE ZETA JONES 'As it happens, I was also a Jill in the eighties - but not half as good a Jill as real Jill' DAWN FRENCH 'Jill met the crisis head on . . . She held the hands of so many men. She lost them, and remembered them, and somehow kept going' RUSSELL T DAVIES A heartbreaking, life-affirming memoir of love, loss and cabaret through the AIDS crisis, from IT'S A SIN's Jill Nalder When Jill Nalder arrived at drama school in London in the early 1980s, she was ready for her life to begin. With her band of best friends - of which many were young, talented gay men with big dreams of their own - she grabbed London by the horns: partying with drag queens at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, hosting cabarets at her glamorous flat, flitting across town to any jobs she could get. But soon rumours were spreading from America about a frightening illness being dubbed the 'gay flu', and Jill and her friends now found their formerly carefree existence under threat. In this moving memoir, IT'S A SIN's Jill Nalder tells the true story of her and her friends' lives during the AIDS crisis -- juggling a busy West End career while campaigning for AIDS awareness and research, educating herself and caring for the sick. Most of all, she shines a light on those who were stigmatised and shamed, and remembers those brave and beautiful boys who were lost too soon. 'Thank God for people like [Jill] . . . I cannot recommend this book highly enough' MICHAEL BALL 'An engaging, moving account' TIMES SATURDAY REVIEW 'Simultaneously devastating and uplifting' GRAZIA 'Engrossing, heart-breaking and inspiring' MATT CAIN

The past few years have witnessed an explosive increase in our collective knowledge of the biology of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Researchers have acquired new understanding of the virus's biochemistry, molecular biology, pathogenesis, genetics, and immunobiology. Resulting therapeutic advances have significantly prolonged the lives of thousands. Yet, the need to develop better therapies is ever more acute and--given the virus's continued spread through the human population--the need for an effective vaccine is urgent.

These goals can be accomplished only through the experienced synthesis of information from the many disciplines participating in HIV research and through the insights of new investigators. This volume is designed to lower the barriers imposed on investigators by the sheer volume of available information--information that often can be found only in far-flung and specialized journals. It provides, in a single resource, an in-depth overview of the diverse areas that constitute HIV research. The result is a broad introduction for students and researchers new to the field as well as an integrated overview for researchers specialized in particular areas of HIV investigation. The volume will also benefit those seeking technical understanding of the virus's biology, including physicians treating HIV-infected patients.

Each chapter is a comprehensive presentation of one area of current AIDS research--including work on the virus life cycle, epidemiology, genetics, protease and reverse transcriptase inhibitors, receptor and co-receptor interactions, therapeutic targets, clinical treatment, immunobiology, and vaccines--written by a leading researcher in that area. The contributors are Jon P. Anderson, Jan Balzarini, Elana Cherry, Thomas J. Coates, Chris Collins, Jon H. Condra, Mark B. Feinberg, Richard B. Gaynor, Matthias Gotte, Daria J. Hazuda, Spyros Kalams, Nathaniel R. Landau, Gerald H. Learn, Norman L. Letvin, James I. Mullins, Willscott E. Naugler, David Nickle, Matthew Rain, Allen G. Rodrigo, Daniel Shriner, Shalom Spira, Mario Stevenson, Todd Summers, Catherine Ulich, Joseph P. Vacca, Mark A. Wainberg, Bruce D. Walker, and Yang Wang."

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.