In this book, France's leading medical anthropologist takes on one of the most tragic stories of the global AIDS crisis—the failure of the ANC government to stem the tide of the AIDS epidemic in ...South Africa. Didier Fassin traces the deep roots of the AIDS crisis to apartheid and, before that, to the colonial period.
This groundbreaking work, with its unique anthropological approach, sheds new light on a central conundrum surrounding AIDS in Africa. Robert J. Thornton explores why HIV prevalence fell during the ...1990s in Uganda despite that country's having one of Africa's highest fertility rates, while during the same period HIV prevalence rose in South Africa, the country with Africa's lowest fertility rate. Thornton finds that culturally and socially determined differences in the structure of sexual networks—rather than changes in individual behavior—were responsible for these radical differences in HIV prevalence. Incorporating such factors as property, mobility, social status, and political authority into our understanding of AIDS transmission, Thornton's analysis also suggests new avenues for fighting the disease worldwide.
Summary
Overall survival (OS) of patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)‐related Burkitt lymphoma (BL), diffuse large B‐cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and plasmablastic lymphoma (PBL) was ...analysed in the German AIDS‐related‐Lymphoma‐Cohort‐Study. Of 291 patients prospectively included between January 2005 and December 2012, 154 had DLBCL, 103 BL and 34 PBL. Two‐year OS rates were similar between BL (69%) and DLBCL patients (63%) but lower for PBL patients (43%). Intermediate (Hazard ratio HR 4·1 95% confidence interval CI 1·98–8·49) or high (HR 4·92 95% CI 2·1–11·61) International Prognostic Index, bone marrow involvement (HR 1·69 95% CI 1·00–2·84) and PBL histology (HR 2·24 95% CI 1·24–4·03) were independent predictors of mortality.
A Fraught Embrace Swidler, Ann; Watkins, Susan Cotts
2017, 2017., 20170307, 2017-03-21, Letnik:
72
eBook
The complex relationships between altruists, beneficiaries, and brokers in the global effort to fight AIDS in Africa
In the wake of the AIDS pandemic, legions of organizations and compassionate ...individuals descended on Africa from faraway places to offer their help and save lives.A Fraught Embraceshows how the dreams of these altruists became entangled with complex institutional and human relationships. Ann Swidler and Susan Cotts Watkins vividly describe the often mismatched expectations and fantasies of those who seek to help, of the villagers who desperately seek help, and of the brokers on whom both Western altruists and impoverished villagers must rely.
Based on years of fieldwork in the heavily AIDS-affected country of Malawi, this powerful book digs into the sprawling AIDS enterprise and unravels the paradoxes of AIDS policy and practice. All who want to do good-from idealistic volunteers to world-weary development professionals-depend on brokers as guides, fixers, and cultural translators. These irreplaceable but frequently unseen local middlemen are the human connection between altruists' dreams and the realities of global philanthropy.
The mutual misunderstandings among donors, brokers, and villagers-each with their own desires and moral imaginations-create all the drama of a romance: longing, exhilaration, disappointment, heartache, and sometimes an enduring connection. Personal stories, public scandals, and intersecting, sometimes clashing fantasies bring the lofty intentions of AIDS altruism firmly down to earth.
Swidler and Watkins ultimately argue that altruists could accomplish more good, not by seeking to transform African lives but by helping Africans achieve their own goals.A Fraught Embraceunveils the tangled relations of those involved in the collective struggle to contain an epidemic.
Eating Spring Rice is the first major ethnographic study of HIV/AIDS in China. Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic research (1995-2005), primarily in Yunnan Province, Sandra Teresa Hyde ...chronicles the rise of the HIV epidemic from the years prior to the Chinese government's acknowledgement of this public health crisis to post-reform thinking about infectious-disease management. Hyde combines innovative public health research with in-depth ethnography on the ways minorities and sex workers were marked as the principle carriers of HIV, often despite evidence to the contrary.
How should the corporate sector engage in fighting the global burden of the AIDS epidemic? India's relatively low HIV prevalence rate often raises the question of whether it is in corporate sector ...interest to allocate resources to combat HIV and AIDS. The five case studies in this report feature a selection of Indian companies that felt compelled to engage in this fight and id allocate resources in order to do so. The challenges these companies encountered and innovative methods they used to surmount these challenges serve as useful lessons for those interested in launching similar intiatives.
This evaluation assesses the development
effectiveness of the World Bank's country-level
HIV/AIDS assistance defined as policy dialogue, analytic
work, and lending with the explicit objective of ...reducing
the scope or impact of the AIDS epidemic. This is the first
comprehensive evaluation of the World Bank's HIV/AIDS
support to countries, from the beginning of the epidemic
through mid-2004. Because the Bank's assistance is for
implementation of government programs by government, it
provides important insights on how national AIDS programs
can be made more effective. For the purposes of the
evaluation, HIV/AIDS assistance includes policy dialogue,
analytic work, and lending with the explicit objective of
reducing the scope or impact of the AIDS epidemic. Few
HIV/AIDS projects have been completed and the vast majority
of projects and commitments are ongoing. With this in mind,
the three substantive chapters address: 1) The evolution and
phases of the Bank's institutional response and an
overview of the portfolio of HIV/AIDS assistance since the
start of the epidemic. 2) Findings on the efficacy of the
"first generation" of completed World Bank
country-level, HIV/AIDS assistance, and lessons from that
experience. 3) An assessment of the assumptions, design,
risks, and implementation to date of 24 ongoing
country-level AIDS projects. in the Africa Multi-Country
AIDS Program (MAP).
This first-person account by one of the pioneers of HIV/AIDS research chronicles the interaction among the pediatric HIV/AIDS community, regulatory bodies, governments, and activists over more than ...three decades. After the discovery of AIDS in a handful of infants in 1981, the next fifteen years showed remarkable scientific progress in prevention and treatment, although blood banks, drug companies, and bureaucrats were often slow to act. 1996 was a watershed year when scientific and clinical HIV experts called for treating all HIV-infected individuals with potent triple combinations of antiretroviral drugs that had been proven effective. Aggressive implementation of prevention and treatment in the United States led to marked declines in the number of HIV-related deaths, fewer new infections and hospital visits, and fewer than one hundred infants born infected each year. Inexplicably, the World Health Organization recommended withholding treatment for the majority of HIV-infected individuals in poor countries, and clinical researchers embarked on studies to evaluate inferior treatment approaches even while the pandemic continued to claim the lives of millions of women and children. Why did it take an additional twenty years for international health organizations to recommend the treatment and prevention measures that had had such a profound impact on the pandemic in wealthy countries? The surprising answers are likely to be debated by medical historians and ethicists. At last, in 2015, came a universal call for treating all HIV-infected individuals with triple-combination antiretroviral drugs. But this can only be accomplished if the mistakes of the past are rectified. The book ends with recommendations on how the pediatric HIV/AIDS epidemic can finally be brought to an end.
Viewing contemporary history from the perspective of the AIDS crisis, Jennifer Brier provides rich, new understandings of the United States' complex social and political trends in the post-1960s era. ...Brier describes how AIDS workers--in groups as disparate as the gay and lesbian press, AIDS service organizations, private philanthropies, and the State Department--influenced American politics, especially on issues such as gay and lesbian rights, reproductive health, racial justice, and health care policy, even in the face of the expansion of the New Right.Infectious Ideasplaces recent social, cultural, and political events in a new light, making an important contribution to our understanding of the United States at the end of the twentieth century.