A New York Times Notable Book of 2007

"The Invisible Cure" is an account of Africa's AIDS epidemic from the inside--a revelatory dispatch from the intersection of village life, government intervention, and international aid. Helen Epstein left her job in the US in 1993 to move to Uganda, where she began work on a test vaccine for HIV. Once there, she met patients, doctors, politicians, and aid workers, and began exploring the problem of AIDS in Africa through the lenses of medicine, politics, economics, and sociology. Amid the catastrophic failure to reverse the epidemic, she discovered a village-based solution that could prove more effective than any network of government intervention and international aid, an intuitive response that calls into question many of the fundamental assumptions about the AIDS in Africa.

Written with conviction, knowledge, and insight, "The Invisible Cure" will change how we think about the worst health crisis of the past century--and indeed about every issue of global public health.

Features a collection of seven research-based articles on AIDS. This work seeks to cut through popular misunderstanding and conventional ideas about the spread and impact of AIDS by employing a political economic perspective in the analysis of the epidemic in diverse settings.

In this broad-ranging book, Michael Bloor gives an overview of our current understanding of the social conditions and contexts of HIV transmission. The author examines the social epidemiology of HIV transmission in its different manifestations in the developing world and in the West, looking at heterosexual and homosexual transmission, sex tourism and prostitution, injecting drug users, haemophiliacs and transfusion recipients. He goes on to look at reports of sociological studies of risk behaviour among men who have sex with men, among heterosexual and bisexual men and women, and among those who share syringes. Drawing on his own research, Michael Bloor presents a critical examination of the different theoretical models of risk and considers their implications for disease prevention.

The AIDS epidemic has touched the lives of all Americans. An entire generation has been forced to redefine the way it looks at intimacy. Our very images of ourselves are being altered in the wake of this tragic illness. Yet we are only now beginning to discover the true extent of the change AIDS has wrought on American society. This massive challenge to public health is creating a fault line beneath our institutions, threatening to undermine much that we have taken for granted about the pillars of our culture. Looking out across the landscape of AIDS, we sense a fundamental shift in the way we think about ourselves, about others, and about government. Shattered Mirrors is a deeply moving meditation on the impact AIDS is having on American consciousness. AIDS has become a moral lesson for our nation, Monroe Price argues, but not the narrow lesson about the dangers of deviancy that certain segments of society have professed. The AIDS epidemic challenges some of our most cherished ideas about individual autonomy, free expression, fairness, and confidence in the future. As this book points out, the ultimate legacy of the AIDS epidemic is far more than its terrible impact on the health of the citizenry. As the disease grinds on, several traditional barriers between church and state, government and the media, citizen and consumer have begun to erode, while other barriers of class, race, and lifestyle are growing larger. It is too early to say whether these and similar changes will be permanent, but as long as there is uncertainty about how devastating AIDS will prove to be to our society, we will continue to debate its meaning and how we should respond to the threat it poses to all of us. In the long run, Price maintains, AIDS may force us to reexamine the role government should play in shaping our personal lives. More than this, it may well oblige us to redefine what we mean by identity and community in a democracy under siege.

AIDS is unquestionably the most serious threat to public health in this century--yet how effective has the United States been in coping with this deadly disease? This sobering analysis of the first five years of the AIDS epidemic reveals the failure of traditional approaches in recognizing and managing this health emergency; it is an extremely unsettling probe into what makes the nation ill equipped to handle a crisis of the magnitude of the one that now confronts us.

Sandra Panem pays particular attention to the Public Health Service, within which the vast majority of biomedical research and public health services are organized, including the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. We learn in dismaying detail how shortcomings in communication within and among the many layers of the health establishment delayed management of the crisis.

She also investigates other problems that surface during a health emergency, involving issues such as federal budgeting, partisan politics, bureaucratic bungles, educating the public, the complications of policymaking, and the vexing role of the press. Panem makes specific recommendations for a centrally coordinated federal response to health emergencies, including the creation of a national health emergency plan.

In collaboration with Consulting Editor, Dr. Helen Boucher, Dr. Paul Edward Sax has put together a state-of the-art issue of the Infectious Disease Clinics of North America devoted to HIV. Clinical review articles from expert authors are specifically devoted to the following topics: HIV Diagnostics -- Current Recommendations and Opportunities for Improvement; Update on HIV Prevention -- PreP, PEP, and Other Strategies; Initial Assessment -- What Tests to Order and Why; Why Everyone (Almost) with HIV Needs to be on Treatment -- A Review of the Critical Data; Initial Therapy in the Integrase Inhibitor Era -- Can We Do Better than Two NRTIs plus an INSTI?; Switching Therapy in Patients with Virologic Suppression -- A Why and a How-To Guide; Management of Treatment Failure, With and Without Resistance; Reproduction Options for People with HIV, and Management of Pregnancy; HIV and Addiction - the Role of the ID Clinician; Management of Patients with Advanced HIV Disease - Challenges and Opportunities; HIV and Aging - Focus on Cardiovascular Risk and Metabolic Abnormalities; Key Principles in HIV Pharmacology; One Patient Has Been Cured of HIV - Will There Ever Be More?; and Linkage and Retention in Care - The Keys to Treatment Success. Readers will come away with the latest information they need to manage diagnosis, treatment and outcomes of HIV patients.

Analogous to other infections, evidence suggests that improved micronutrient intake may reduce HIV transmission and progression, as well as morbidity from common and opportunistic infections. This is important information, considering many in the world's HIV-infected population do not yet have access to anti-retroviral drugs. Micronutrients and HIV Infection presents current knowledge on the role of micronutrients in HIV and other infections - knowledge that can be used to improve case management and public health interventions.

The book provides a comprehensive overview of micronutrients and HIV infection through a review of recently published human studies and intervention trials and other important epidemiology based literature. It begins by introducing the malnutrition-infection complex, Nutritionally Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, and the role of oxidative stress in infection. Then the book covers the history, biochemistry, biological functions, and food sources of individual micronutrients, and reviews their roles in host defense and resistance to infections in general, and HIV in particular. Finally, the book discusses how this information can be applied for the benefit of individuals with HIV and countries where HIV is widespread and treatment unavailable.

Most of the world's 35 million people living with HIV are micronutrient deficient and have little access to HIV testing, counseling, and care. In addition to covering specific micronutrients, Micronutrients and HIV Infection presents a critical review of how existing micronutrient interventions can be promoted, expanded, and modified to reduce the magnitude and impact of the HIV pandemic.

In the first part of this thought-provoking book, moral theologians address the worldwide AIDS pandemic and illustrate the complexity of HIV prevention and treatment within the context of local issues and cultural concerns in twenty-six cases from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America, and North America.

In the second part, essays by well-known theologians home in on the fundamental moral issues involved and demonstrate how the Roman Catholic tradition can help in constructively mediating the moral conundrum of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.

A concluding essay by Kevin Kelly focuses on the challenges AIDS presents to moral theology at the beginning of the new millennium.

AIDS is not solely a medical issue but also has profound implications for social and family relationships. Traditionally when a person is ill, the family is seen to provide emotional, practical and social support. Experience has shown, however, that AIDS disrupts this conventional pattern of support. On the one hand AIDS, like any other serious illness, affects family members both from day to day and in the long term. What distinguishes AIDS from so many other illnesses is the associated social stigma and the fact that HIV may be transmissible, or may have been transmitted, within a relationship. Most psychological and social research has concentrated on the impact of AIDS on individuals. Only recently has attention turned to the effect of AIDS on the family. This is the first book to address AIDS in the family and draws on the work of experienced researchers and practitioners from around the world. It is most fitting that the book should first be published in 1994, the United Nations International Year of the Family. Recognizing the role of the family may mark a change in emphasis in future social research and policy in relation to HIV and AIDS.

The "Encyclopedia of AIDS" covers all major aspects of the first 15 years of the AIDS epidemic, including the breakthroughs in treatment announced at the International AIDS Conference in July 1996. The encyclopedia provides extensive coverage of major topics in eight areas: basic science and epidemiology; transmission and prevention; pathology and treatment; impacted populations; policy and law; politics and activism; culture and society; and the global epidemic.
With more than 300 entries written by 175 specialists and illustrated with more than 100 photographs and charts, the "Encyclopedia of AIDS" is an essential reference work for students at the undergraduate and graduate levels, professionals in a wide variety of medical, service, and care fields, academics, researchers, journalists, and general readers.

One single factor can have life-or-death importance for someone with HIV: food. The right diet and nutrition can boost the immune system, and most important, maintain lean body mass. This groundbreaking, compassionate, and medically sound sourcebook is a food bible for the HIV community and their caregivers. Cooking for Life contains all the information you need about one of the safest, most effective, yet underutilized, weapons for staying well.

This training package has been produced for audiences unfamiliar with harm reduction for injecting drug users. It provides an introduction to important concepts in HIV prevention for injecting drug users. The package contains five training modules with slides that can be delivered separately or in one session. The modules cover the following topics: introduction to drugs, HIV and harm reduction; Outreach to injecting drug users; Drug-dependency treatment; Needle and syringe programmes and HIV prevention in prisons and closed settings. The delivery of this training package (book and a CD-Rom) should include opportunities for discussion and reflection of the information provided. Activities to facilitate this process have been included. There are two versions of this training manual. Participant Manual - Version A takes approximately three hours to deliver while Participant Manual - Version B takes around one hour.

Introduces AIDS, explaining what it is, how it cannot be spread by casual contact, and how to act around someone who has it.

With informative discussion of safer sex and sexuality, HIV testing, treatment, public policy, and activism. A thorough analysis of AIDS issues for women.

HIV/AIDS is not just a health issue, and many Member States of WHO have adopted multisectoral approaches with other ministries and sectors taking up their share of responsibilities. However, despite this multisectoral approach, there is still a clear and essential role for the health sector to play in order to make a leading contribution in the response to HIV/AIDS.This set of training modules--including a CD-Rom--on planning for the health sector response to HIV/AIDS is intended to assist member countries of WHO to more effectively take up their responsibilities for their national health sector strategic planning. The training modules have evolved through a series of meetings with partner organizations and the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia, and are based on the "WHO Planning Guide for the Health Sector Response to HIV/AIDS" and the "Manual for Designing and Facilitating Training Workshops 2010."