Vulnerability and HIV/AIDS in Africa: from demography to development

✍ Scribed by W. T. S. Gould

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 183 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1544-8444
• DOI: 10.1002/psp.395

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Geographical studies of the African HIV/AIDS epidemic must consider not only familiar biological and epidemiological parameters, but also the development contexts in which the epidemic is raging. HIV/AIDS is exceptional in its geographical spread and socio‐economic and demographic impacts: very different from more familiar African diseases such as malaria. Vulnerability to the disease needs to consider not only exposure, but also each society's capacity to cope with it at the same time as the heavy burdens of poverty, prior infection and fragile governance, and also each society's potentiality to intervene to mitigate its potentially devastating effects, whether through facilitating behavioural change or in more effective health provision. The importance of the development dimensions in Africa is illustrated through discussion of the wide range of scenarios offered by UNAIDS for the patterns and levels of the epidemic for 2025. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.