HIV/AIDS is a catastrophe globally but nowhere more so than in sub-Saharan Africa, which in 2008 accounted for 67 percent of cases worldwide and 91 percent of new infections. The Institute of Medicine recommends that the United States and African nations move toward a strategy of shared responsibility such that these nations are empowered to take ownership of their HIV/AIDS problem and work to solve it.

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.

HIV and AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology is a collection that seeks to further our understanding of AIDS by shifting the predominant understandings generated by biomedical and epidemiological research. Brings together international contributors---including often overlooked African scholars and activists---from across the social sciences to examine HIV and AIDS from angles previously unexplored. By presenting on-the-ground evidence and ethnographic cases, emphasizes that HIV transmission in sub-Saharan Africa is a complex and regionally specific phenomenon rooted in local economies, deepening poverty, migration, gender, war, global economies, and cultural politics. Recognizes that AIDS in Africa cannot be stemmed until social, gender, and economic inequities are addressed in meaningful ways.

This second edition of the book provides up-to-date information on new drugs, new proven HIV prevention interventions, a new chapter on positive prevention, and current HIV epidemiology. This definitive text covers all aspects of HIV/AIDS in South Africa, from basic science to medicine, sociology, economics and politics. It has been written by a highly respected team of South African HIV/AIDS experts and provides a thoroughly researched account of the epidemic in the region.

Current data and trends in morbidity and mortality for the sub-Saharan Region as presented in this new edition reflect the heavy toll that HIV/AIDS has had on health indicators, leading to either a stalling or reversal of the gains made, not just for communicable disorders, but for cancers, as well as mental and neurological disorders.

From one of our most widely read, award-winning journalists – comes the powerful, unputdownable story of the very human cost of a global pandemic of staggering scope and scale. It is essential reading for our times. In 28, Stephanie Nolen, the Globe and Mail’s Africa Bureau Chief, puts a human face to the crisis created by HIV-AIDS in Africa. She has achieved, in this amazing book, something extraordinary: she writes with a power, understanding and simplicity that makes us listen, makes us understand and care. Through riveting anecdotal stories – one for each of the million people living with HIV-AIDS in Africa – Nolen explores the effects of an epidemic that well exceeds the Black Plague in magnitude. It is a calamity that is unfolding just a 747-flight away, and one that will take the lives of these 28 million without the help of massive, immediate intervention on an unprecedented scale. 28 is a timely, transformative, thoroughly accessible book that shows us definitively why we continue to ignore the growth of HIV-AIDS in Africa only at our peril and at an intolerable moral cost. 28’s stories are much more than a record of the suffering and loss in 28 emblematic lives. Here we meet women and men fighting vigorously on the frontlines of disease: Tigist Haile Michael, a smart, shy 14-year-old Ethiopian orphan fending for herself and her baby brother on the slum streets of Addis Ababa; Alice Kadzanja, an HIV-positive nurse in Malawi, where one in six adults has the virus, and where the average adult’s life expectancy is 36; and Zackie Achmat, the hero of South Africa’s politically fragmented battle against HIV-AIDS. 28 also tells us how the virus works, spreads and, ultimately, kills. It explains the connection of HIV-AIDS to conflict, famine and the collapse of states; shows us how easily treatment works for those lucky enough to get it and details the struggles of those who fight to stay alive with little support. It makes vivid the strong, desperate people doing all they can, and maintaining courage, dignity and hope against insurmountable odds. It is – in its humanity, beauty and sorrow – a call to action for all who read it.

Afterword by Reverend Gideon Byamugisha. Published in conjunction with Positive Lives and with the support of Action Aid, this remarkable photo essay is a uniquely powerful and affecting account of the impact of HIV/AIDS in Central, East and Southern Africa. Describing the tragic realities of AIDS in both images and in the voices of the people featured, the work takes us on an intimate journey into the particular lives of the sufferers, reaching far beyond the appalling statistics of the disease.