28 Stories of AIDS in Africa, by Stephanie Nolen

In South Africa, AIDS is one of the top causes of death. South Africa has the biggest AIDS/HIV epidemic in the world because of violence against women, poverty, and lack of education. Given this, “Africans account for nearly 70% of those who live with HIV and are dying of AIDS” (Morgenstern, Dr. Michael).

HIV/AIDS has been responsible for one of the worst epidemics in history. In her book “The Invisible Cure” Helen Epstein details why Africa in particular was so devastated by the disease, which countries failed and which succeeded in the struggle to contain the virus, and why this happened. Epstein highlights a particular phenomenon, that first took place in Uganda, but which can be translated to many countries and situations, and which she calls “the invisible cure.”

In contrast with Lincoln Parish’s population growth rate which is nearly stagnant is Molo Parish, which is in, Kenya, one of the countries in the world with the highest population growth rates. Over the years, the population has more than tripled, greatly increasing pressure on the country’s resources. Together with a widening income gap, this has eroded gains in education, health, food security, employment and income. Also, HIV/AIDS is most prevalent among young and middle-aged Kenyans in Molo Parish, the most productive segment of the population. The illness leaves orphans and households headed by women that are even more vulnerable to poverty. The burden of waterborne diseases, malaria and HIV/AIDS weighs heavily on both the country and Kenyan families, affecting income, food security and development potential. Life expectancy fell to 46 years in

The film describing an ordinary woman Noerine Kaleeba devoting herself fighting social stigma around AIDS in Uganda is a powerful scene. Her personal account of seeing her husband dying from AIDS propelled her to fly to Geneva to meet with Jonathan Mann, the leading researcher in the global AIDS program. When she arrived at the WHO building, she was rejected to meet with Mann. However, her emotional response caught Mann’s attention and when she sat down with Mann, he told her that her husband is going to die. But Mann asked Kaleeba “there is a prejudice that is attached to this disease that we have to fight, and will you help me fight it?” Kaleeba later became the co-founder of the AIDS activism group “The AIDS Support Organization,” a group that provides care, support and counselling as well as community education for prevention in Uganda. In this scene, Jonathan Mann recognized an important social factor of the disease which is that AIDS is attached to a serious stigma and discrimination. Due to the fact that there is

Did you know “AIDS is the leading cause of death in Africa” (Quinn, online). Twenty percent of Africa’s population has died from AIDS. Poverty is a big problem in Africa. Men have been forced to become migrant workers in urban areas. And antiretroviral treatment at this time is not available to African people. AIDS is a big problem in Africa today that is now requiring help from the world.

The world as a whole should be mortified by what is happening in Sub-Saharan Africa. In places like Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho poverty, crime and systematic corruption are the tinder for the fire that is the HIV epidemic in Africa.

Despite the government’s best efforts to downplay the HIV epidemic that was beginning in South Africa, the disease began to spread throughout the general population in the late 1980s. In 1988, cases of seroconversion started to appear in individuals outside of the MSM community; each year, between 1988 and 1994, saw a doubling of HIV prevalence. As of 1990, the dominant mode of transmission for HIV switched from homosexual to heterosexual intercourse, creating an epidemic among the citizens of South Africa. At the same time, the rate of mother-to-child transmission was on the rise. Throughout the escalation of the HIV epidemic in South Africa, the apartheid government took a hard line stance on HIV and AIDS, calling it a ‘black disease’ and refusing to invest resources to combat the spate. Rather, it continued to use fear tactics and stereotyping to reinforce the ‘typical’ HIV-infected individual, targeting MSM and black populations in country-wide campaigns. Any attempts at preventing the spread of disease were usually thwarted by a lack of infrastructure in the local governments and provinces, with each area attempting a different strategy to combat HIV infection.

Other influences such as the economy factor into the transmission of aids. Women who are unmarried and have kids use sexual relations to support themselves and their children and without other help, they rely on it as a means of

In the 1980s and 90s, women who face the HIV epidemic often had to go at it alone. As the media portrayed the disease a one for gay, white males, women were often left without knowledge of the disease and without knowledge of how to keep themselves safe. Along with that, women also had to deal with the discrimination of doctors who didn’t want to treat those with HIV or didn’t want to treat those who didn’t want to accept their form of treatment. For example, Isle Groth, in her tale Bright Candles in the Dark, was swept aside after she told her doctor at the hospital that she didn’t want to partake in the AZT. Additionally, women also had to deal with being married and believing that they are not at risk. They would never think to worry if

In “Only your Calamity”, author Joe Wright discusses how those affected by AIDS either directly or via someone close to them, started and built AIDS activism has it is known today. Wright uses the personal experiences of Bobbi Campbell and Michael Callen, who are also mentioned and cited in Victory Deferred, to explain their drive to become AIDS activists. Wright details how AIDS acted has a form of “social death”, once a person had been diagnosed they were often seen has dead to their peers. So people with AIDS grouped together and at the national AIDS convention in Dallas, declared their rights. These people demanded to be treated with basic human respect by medical professionals and their peers. Most importantly their brave statements gave hope to other people with AIDS. The story of the activists during the epidemic was innately human. These people rose up to advocate for their rights not to become statistics, to be seen as more than their disease. Wright is able to connect their stories with contemporary activist working in places like Africa, where people with AIDS are being treated much like gay men here during the early 1980s. The stories of these activists allow historians to make direct connections to causes and effects. These are the people who change the

Unique within media promoting AIDS education, Kwame Dawes portrays the fragile disease culture of Kingston and surrounding ghettos with a series of personal, introspective portrayals. Poems, interviews, and documentary footage about key individuals magnify the challenge of overcoming the disease and the social stigmas facing disease patients in the small country of

Just as clearly, experience shows that the right approaches, applied quickly enough with courage and resolve, can and do result in lower HIV infection rates and less suffering for those affected by the epidemic. An ever-growing AIDS epidemic is not inevitable; yet, unless action against the epidemic is scaled up drastically, the damage already done will seem minor compared with what lies ahead. This may sound dramatic, but it is hard to play down the effects of a disease that stands to kill more than half of the young adults in the countries where it has its firmest hold—most of them before they finish the work of caring for their children or providing for their elderly parents. Already, 18.8 million people around the world have died of AIDS, 3.8 million of them children. Nearly twice that many—34.3 million—are now living with HIV, the virus [9].

Sub-Saharan Africa is the region of the world that is most affected by HIV/AIDS. The United Nations reports that an estimated 25.4 million people are living with HIV and that approximately 3.1 million new infections occurred in 2004. To put these figures in context, more than 60 percent of the people living with the infection reside in Africa. Even these staggering figures do not quite capture the true extent and impact that this disease causes on the continent. In 1998, about 200,000 Africans died as a result of various wars taking place on the continent. In that same year, more than 2 million succumbed to HIV/AIDS (Botchwey, 2000).

This disease has made people outcasts in our society because they have this disease that can kill or make someone ill for a long period of time which will adventually lead to death. Widdison and Delaney (1996) write, "It is convenient to characterize a social problem as a conflict of values and duties, a conflict of rights or social condition that leads to or is thought to lead to harmful consequences". (Page 10) Staying with the topic that over population and poverty combined causes social problems such as scarce jobs and resources for people but only that overpopulation is responsible for the conditions, which contribute to the overall lowering of the quality of life of human beings in society. Another problem is AIDS, which is both a population and social problem. People are sometimes not accepted because they have the AIDS virus. This also affects the poor people more than the wealthy because AIDS is more common among poor neighborhoods because they have less money to buy things such as condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS and other diseases. According to the Global AIDS Policy Commission "about 95 percent were spent in industrialized countries that have less than 25 percent of the world's population", 18 percent of the people with AIDS and 15 percent of HIV infections worldwide." (Tarantola and Mann, 1995 pages 123-124) According these numbers, a very large

One of the major problems affecting the South African country is the spread of HIV. The country is believed to have the most number of HIV victims than any other country. As seen on the diagram, South Africa has the highest adult HIV prevalence. (GRAPH) Only 10% of the children who need treatment are able to have the benefit of undergoing treatment; this causes the country’s life expectancy to decrease further. By looking at the different ways on how the government is dealing with the spread of HIV, we can see that their decisions are based towards the prevention of HIV as oppose to