This social science research report compares the mechanisms for financing HIV/AIDS programs in Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe. The comparative analysis of the financial dimension of HIV/AIDS programs and interventions across the six countries includes a critique of their statistical differences.

Based upon national reviews of current policies, strategic plans, and actual programs, as well as key informant interviews conducted with staff of governmental departments, this study is a detailed analysis of in-country drug policies in relation to the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. One of the first scientific reviews of disease policy, legislation, and financing, this comprehensive research study not only reviews HIV/AIDS policy but also provides recommendations for strengthening programs that deal with this disease.

As we approach the 25th anniversary of the first recognition of HIV/AIDS in 1981, this book reflects on the international impact of the disease. It has persistently remained a global issue, with more than 50 million people worldwide estimated to have been infected since that date. This ambitious book, written by 165 authors from 30 countries, offers a multi-country comparative study that examines how the response to the common, global threat of HIV is shaped by the history, culture, institutions and health systems of the individual countries affected. Increasingly the shift of health systems has been from prevention only as the main containment strategy, to a strategy that includes scaling up HIV treatment, and care and prevention services, including antiretroviral therapy. Thus, all parts of the health system must be involved; policy makers, healthcare professionals and users of the services have been forced to think differently about how services are financed, how resources are allocated, how systems are structured and organized, how services are delivered to patients, and how the resulting activity is monitored and evaluated in order to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, equity and acceptability of the response. This book is unique in attempting to describe and assess a range of responses across the globe by situating them within the characteristics of each country and its health system. Most chapters combine a health policy expert with an HIV specialist, allowing both a 'top down' health system approach and a 'bottom up' HIV-specific perspective. There are thematic and analytical sections, which provide an overview and some suggestions for solutions to the most serious outstanding issues, and chapters which analyse specific country and organisational responses. There is no perfect health system, but the evidence provided here allows the sharing of knowledge, and a opportunity to assess the impact and reactions, to an epidemic that must be considered a long term issue.

This book identifies the main challenges to confronting global health (in)securities at three levels. First, at the level of zoonosis, to which HIV and Ebola, as well as H1Nn, MERS-CoV, and SARS belong, and which promise to continue to emerge. Second, at the level of the spread of these across bio-, ecological and political boundaries and borders, particularly nationally. These present challenges not only in terms of immunities, but also in terms of rights – who is eligible for treatment under whose responsibility? Finally, at the international level of global administration, presenting a challenge in terms of coordinated public health, legal, political, and economic response. The book develops coordinated policy recommendations for meeting these challenges in a globalized world, and examines the unique opportunities and challenges associated with the co-administration of the good of public health by both nation states and non-state actors. This book will be valuable read for students of Public Policy, Health Policy and Management, International Relations and Global Governance.

A follow-up to the Nelson Mandela Foundation's 2002 national household survey of HIV/AIDS prevalence in South Africa, this 2005 report seeks to provide further understanding of the HIV pandemic. Using data that tested for HIV incidence rather than just using mortality statistics, this study looks at which socio-demographic groups are most vulnerab≤ whether new policies have been successful in fighting the disease; what exactly is being done by key players, such as the government, churches, and other civil society organizations; and how the spread of HIV can be reduced in South Africa.

As witnessed through the firsthand experiences of a frontline activist and international medical aid practitioner, this biosocial political study gives voice to the inequities in undocumented Mexican and Zimbabwean women’s emergency healthcare access and treatment in Houston, United States of America, and Johannesburg, South Africa. As a construct of feminist transdisciplinary fieldwork, this research utilizes methodological pluralism and biosocial disparities to examine constructs of “social determinants” or “social origins” of women’s suffering, disease, and healthcare access. These variables include gender inequity, xenophobia, structural violence, political economy subjugation, healthcare access and delivery disparities, and human rights violations. Illustrated through 24 purposive interviews, this seven-year study shows Zimbabwean women sought out emergency care at a rate 16 times higher than their Mexican counterparts—but reported lower instances of domestic violence and depression. Most notably, the Zimbabwean women reported communicable diseases at double the rate of the interviewed Latinas. However, the most surprising finding of the study was the high number of Mexican women, some 60%, who cited depression as one of their indications for seeking emergency healthcare. The study indicated that the reality of many forced migrants’ experiences in claiming their accorded healthcare rights was more theoretical than practical in its distribution and disposition. Particularly, sovereign freedom and civil justice were not being conferred to these women according to the two host country’s mandated Constitutional precepts, and/or emergency medical aid mandates, and social, gender, aid, and human rights justice directives. Thus the role of government in shaping these systemic and institutionalized ideologies will be examined, as well as paradigms that effect national healthcare expenditures, subsidies, and public health risks. The intention of this study is not to provide definitive recommendations of specific forced migration policies that have a civic and/or partisan duty to be executed, but rather to serve as an illustration of how these social tenets, inequitable power relations, and political economy subjugation directly impact socioeconomically disadvantaged women’s health, livelihood, and human rights.