South Africa and the AIDS Crisis

There are an immense amount of problems in Africa caused by the AIDS disease. Healthcare providers are available and located all over Africa. Even though they are available, they have only “enough medicine for long-term survival available for 30,000 Africans” (Copson, 3).

When the AIDS and HIV virus crept its way into the human-race, it quickly, and without warning, claimed the lives of millions. Then when its destructive wake had finally been abated, it left behind several untold mysteries. Throughout the course of this class, all the new material we have been exposed to has added some unique piece to the puzzle of the AIDS epidemic. Each puzzle pieces have ranged from speculations on how the AIDS epidemic had begun, to what exactly has the epidemic done. We have also tackled the question and how it forced a change in society. Our newest piece of the puzzle is the documentary “The Age of AIDS,” by William Cran. Although this documentary did not surprise me in its content, it did, however, affirm certain types

In The Invisible Cure, Helen Epstein talks about why HIV/AIDS rate is so high in Africa compared to the rest of the world. Through the book, she gives us an account of the disease and the struggles that many health experts and ordinary Africans went through to understand this disease, and how different African countries approached the same problem differently. Through this paper, I will first address the different ways Uganda and Southern African countries, South Africa and Botswana in particular, dealt with this epidemic, and then explain how we can use what we have learned from these African countries to control outbreaks of communicable disease elsewhere around the world.

AIDS was first reported in Botswana in 1985. It seemed to have started from two male homosexuals within the region. From there, it spread through sex, needles, and combining blood. Since the virus was not familiar to anyone in Africa, the two men were clueless that they had the virus and continued with their everyday routines, which led to the cause of spreading the AIDS/HIV virus. AIDS continued to spread during the diamond boom, when as diamonds became a huge and more profitable commodity, there were more and more diamond mines operating in Botswana. The higher the demand for diamonds, the more mines needed workers. As a result, workers from different villages came to look for work in the diamond

Much like the emergence of HIV in the United States, the first HIV cases in South Africa were found in the homosexual male population. In 1983, two homosexual, South African men passed away from opportunistic infections associated with autoimmune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). In the months following, many other homosexual men became infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which caused the people of South Africa to consider AIDS a disease that solely infected homosexuals. Sadly, this misperception created stigma around becoming infected with HIV.

When you are asked if AIDS is still a crisis in America “it does depend on who you are”, As stated by Sarah Schulman in the article “Is There Still an AIDS Crisis in the U.S? It Depends on Who You Are”. “If you are the type of person that is able to afford all of the treatments and are able to live a lifestyle of tolerating a lot of awful side effects”. If you are the type of person that can not afford all the of treatments, then you are in a crisis. The perception of AIDS as a “gay disease” limited the efforts to combats the disease. It limited the efforts because people did not want to do anything or engage with anything that had to do with the issue. And as stated in our text books, by 2000 AIDS had claimed almost 300,000 American lives.

Politically framing the AIDS epidemic as the “black eye” of the FDA in the 1980s and a controversial time in the Reagan Administration is not a new concept from a modern perspective. However, when looking closely at the ramifications of AIDS patient activism on public opinion of regulation and the critical view of the Treatment IND program established to catalyze AIDS research, it is undeniable that the AIDS epidemic was a critical point for Reagan’s deregulation policy and was influential in securing favorability for the wave of neoliberalism in federal policy that drove looser regulations in the agency. In fact, the public health crisis became crucial to the establishment of a period when the FDA was vulnerable to capturing.

This book is a very interesting and detailed analysis of the AIDS epidemic. It is very fact heavy, yet it still manages to entertain the reader and capture his or her attention. This riveting narrative describes pretty much everything you need to know about HIV and AIDS. The ideas behind this compelling work were collectively put together and written by an award-winning AIDS researcher named Daniel Halperin and his coauthor, a Johannesburg Washington Post reporter, Craig Timberg. This exciting story tells you about how Western colonial powers first sparked the flame that would later come to be known as the AIDS crisis. They unfortunately helped to rapidly ignite and spread HIV and AIDS across the world. Tinderbox uses examples from

I come from Los Angeles, a city over 7,500 miles away from Nambonkaha, yet I am not new to the African culture. Having friends and teachers from various countries within the continent such as Ghana, Namibia, Egypt, and Rwanda. I remember my first introduction to my friend, Justin, who was from Ghana. I can distinctly recall the aroma of Coco Butter, which I only learned to identify in the following weeks. Growing up with a friend who is from Ghana never seemed odd to me, other than I would rarely be able to meet his entire family. I often would catch myself thinking about the cliché thoughts, What is it like over there? Is it safe to go? Should I go when I’m older? Each of these questions proved to be a fruitless argument, cycling through my

​Today, in the world, especially African Countries in the South are facing an epidemic that has gone completely ignored by their very own government. Instead of proposing policies directed towards reducing the amount of HIV/AIDS cases that continue to rise each year, they have chosen to implement failed policies or none at all. Countries that have attempted to enact government policy to try to decrease the spread of the epidemic has ultimately failed in a broad sense. The epidemic is known as the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and the virus Human Immune Deficiency Virus (HIV) (…). For this research paper, the countries of Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe will be each contrasted to Rwanda. the Southern African Countries’ mentioned previously HIV/AIDS rates are among the highest in Africa because of the lack of government action; whereas Rwanda’s rate of infection is among the lowest. Questions that should be answered by the end of this research paper will be, “Which Southern African Countries’ policies are more effective and why are some more effective than others? Is this perhaps a measure of state capacity?”

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) spread quickly across the continent of Africa unfortunately taking many lives and creating a burden on the countries affected. In 2011 South Africa was declared the highest population living with the virus (reference). With a growing number of individuals affected by the virus the South African government found an increased need for health care services. However, many nurses and health care providers became ill or had died from the virus, thus creating a need for the government to develop a home-based care policy (reference).

Of all the people suffering and living today with the HIV/AIDs virus, two-thirds of them live in sub-Saharan Africa, while this is true, this region constrains little more than 10 percent of the world’s population. The AIDS virus has caused an extreme amount of suffering in the people of Africa. The virus is everywhere, and this is what makes this virus so hard to stop. It’s directly affecting households, schools, and workplaces and even destroying what little economy the Africans had. In 2009, it’s estimated that about one million three hundred thousand adults and children have died as a direct result of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa (avert.org/aids-impact-africa.htm). Since the beginning of this epidemic, more than fifteen million Africans have lost their lives to AIDS. Currently, is there access to treatment of HIV and AIDS, but fewer than half of Africans affected by the virus are getting the treatment (avert.org/aids-impact-africa.htm). South Africa, without a doubt has one of the

First reported incidences of HIV were established in rural geographic areas prior to 1955 (Lemey et al., 2003). The virus then managed to quickly spread amongst larger populations resulting in a shift from an uncommon infection to a highly prevalent disease throughout 1955 to 1970. After the original outbreak, in 1994, further information regarding the infection was mandated to be reported to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 25 different states using a structured confidentiality report system (Prejean et al., 2011). With this provided system, the Global Programme on AIDS and the World Health Organization (1995) later concluded a total of 10,000 new cases develop each day.

HIV/AIDS has no cure, it is contagious, it is deadly. In Africa millions of citizens are dying every day (HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. 2015). Seven out every ten-people died in 2008 from HIV/AIDS (HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. (2015, May 01). Over two-thirds of Adults in Sub-Saharan are living with HIV. The key affected populations in sub-Saharn Africa are young females, children, sex workers, and many others (HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. (2015, May 01). These populations often do not have the recourses to be able to afford any type of medications. There are advocates to help African regions such as UNAIDS, AVAC and many other organizations. As far the help from government

The number of individuals in South Africa infected with HIV is larger than in any other single country in the world. The 2007 UNAIDS report estimated that 5,700,000 South Africans had HIV/AIDS, or just under 12% of South Africa 's population of 48 million. In the adult population the rate is 18.5%.