While there is a growing list of publications devoted to the AIDS epidemic, Africa, with two-thirds of the world's cases, still receives scant attention. This book may change the way we think about AIDS and how it is being addressed in Africa and the rest of the world. The book draws on first-hand research and in-depth investigations carried out by a team of researchers from Britain, Zambia and Tanzania, and focuses on the gendered aspect of the struggle against AIDS. The authors study the severity of the epidemic and the threat it poses to the population and society in Tanzania and Zambia. They argue that the success of strategies against the spread of AIDS in Africa rests on their recognition of existing gendered power relations and that this success might be enhanced if the strategies are built on existing organisational skills and practices, especially among women. Their conclusions have repercussions for all countries around the world, and especially the rest of Africa.

"AIDS has been a devastating plague in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, yet the long-term implications for gender and sexuality are just emerging. This book examines how AIDS has altered the ways masculinity is lived in Uganda, a country known as Africa's great AIDS success story. Based on extensive ethnographic research in an urban slum community called Bwaise, this book reveals the persistence of masculine privilege in the age of AIDS and the implications such privilege has for men's and women's health and wellbeing in Uganda and beyond"--

AIDS, Sex, and Culture is a revealing examination of the impact the AIDS epidemic in Africa has had on women, based on the author's own extensive ethnographic research. based on the author's own story growing up in South Africa looks at the impact of social conservatism in the US on AIDS prevention programs discussion of the experiences of women in areas ranging from Durban in KwaZulu Natal to rural settlements in Namibia and Botswana includes a chapter written by Sibongile Mkhize at the University of KwaZulu Natal who tells the story of her own family’s struggle with AIDS

The current HIV and AIDS regime has opened up unknown vistas in intellectual pursuits and knowledge creation. One such newly opened up area of research is studying HIV and AIDS in relation to gender issues. However, owing to the devastating nature of the epidemic, most studies tend to focus on women merely as an "at risk" population leaving aside the wider sociological dimensions that pertain to women's sexuality in general, issues of AIDS related stigma and discrimination and how it impacts on women's careers as economic contributors to society. The uniqueness of the present study lies in the fact that it embodies the author's triangulated research into the tripartite dimensions of HIV and AIDS, women's sexuality, and gender-sociology, all against the backdrop of analysing actual experiences of career women in Kenyan universities.

The AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to affect all facets of life throughout the subcontinent. Deaths related to AIDS have driven down the life expectancy rate of residents in Zambia, Kenya, and Uganda with far-reaching implications. This book details the current state of the AIDS epidemic in Africa and what is known about the behaviors that contribute to the transmission of the HIV infection. It lays out what research is needed and what is necessary to design more effective prevention programs.

The Republic of Therapy tells the story of the global response to the HIV epidemic from the perspective of community organizers, activists, and people living with HIV in West Africa. Drawing on his experiences as a physician and anthropologist in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, Vinh-Kim Nguyen focuses on the period between 1994, when effective antiretroviral treatments for HIV were discovered, and 2000, when the global health community acknowledged a right to treatment, making the drugs more available. During the intervening years, when antiretrovirals were scarce in Africa, triage decisions were made determining who would receive lifesaving treatment. Nguyen explains how those decisions altered social relations in West Africa. In 1994, anxious to “break the silence” and “put a face to the epidemic,” international agencies unwittingly created a market in which stories about being HIV positive could be bartered for access to limited medical resources. Being able to talk about oneself became a matter of life or death. Tracing the cultural and political logic of triage back to colonial classification systems, Nguyen shows how it persists in contemporary attempts to design, fund, and implement mass treatment programs in the developing world. He argues that as an enactment of decisions about who may live, triage constitutes a partial, mobile form of sovereignty: what might be called therapeutic sovereignty.

This book addresses the impact of HIV on populations of men who have sex with men in Africa and local responses to the issue. It documents the enduring existence of a rich variety of same-sex practices between men. More critically, it analyses how the denial and social rejection of same-sex sexuality, together with the legacy of criminalization by former colonial rulers, has not only fueled the transmission of HIV between men, but has also impeded an effective response. The book also documents some of the outstanding progress that has been made and acknowledges the differences between African countries. Through its focus on lived realities and grassroots activism in Africa, this book will appeal to researchers, policy makers and practitioners alike.