This Very Short Introduction is about a unique and dynamic disease that has long-term consequences. It provides an introduction to the science around the pandemic but focuses on the profound impacts AIDS is having on households, communities, and on national demographic and development indicators.
[...]... Thompson; in Durban, the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division staff; my family Ailsa Marcham, Rowan Whiteside, and Douglas Whiteside; and friends, colleagues, and readers, specifically Tony Barnett, May Chazan, Stephanie Nixon, Nana Poku, Judith Shier, Tim Quinlan, Obed Qulo, Jon Simon, and Alex de Waal, and the OUP readers This page intentionally left blank Abbreviations AIDS ANC ART AZT CBR CDR... the margins of society and who face legal or social stigmatization: sex workers, drug users, and men who have sex with men In China’s central provinces many cases are due to the sale of blood Peasants sold their blood, the plasma was extracted, and what was left was pooled and transfused back, a practice that prevented anaemia in the donors but ensured rapid spread of HIV, hepatitis, malaria, and other... cure or vaccine and have proven lamentably inadequate at stopping its progress in many communities Medical advances mean that there are treatments available that can prolong life, although they are expensive and complex and do not cure This Very Short Introduction is about a unique and dynamic disease that has long-term consequences It provides an introduction to the science around the pandemic but focuses... were about 18,000 HIV infections in North America, 1,000 each in Europe and Latin America, and 41,000 in sub-Saharan Africa Table 1 shows current data There are different sub-epidemics around the world Southern Africa has an epidemic transmitted primarily through heterosexual intercourse, with more women than men infected In Asia total numbers are alarming but small as a proportion of the populations... prevalence and incidence Prevalence and incidence are key concepts in epidemiology and are important for understanding the spread of HIV and associated data Prevalence is the absolute number of people infected The prevalence rate is the proportion of the population that has a disease at a particular time (or averaged over a period of time) With HIV, prevalence rates are given as a percentage of a specific... South Africa, where AIDS affects us all as we watch colleagues, friends, neighbours, and co-workers fall ill and die We converse about and take these deaths in our stride in a way that is abnormal but unremarked We have made huge progress in understanding the science of the retrovirus that causes AIDS: where it came from, how it works, and how it spreads; we are still a long way from having a cure or vaccine... when everyone who is likely to be infected has been The highest national prevalence recorded so far was Swaziland’s 42.6% among antenatal clinic patients in 2004; in 2006, prevalence had fallen to 39.2% HIV/AIDS The international dimension of the epidemic is not always appreciated It can be illustrated with two examples In South East Asia, the ‘golden triangle’ is the main opium-producing area and covers... sub-Saharan Africa, specifically Southern Africa, and many examples in this introduction are drawn from here HIV/AIDS is a global phenomenon but the dynamics and its consequences are played out differently across the world This introduction looks at the epidemics and what they mean for countries, populations, production, and reproduction It reflects that AIDS calls on us to assess what is important to... impossible a decade ago; and the epidemic does not respect national borders The timing varies Where the epidemic was reported early, such as in Uganda and Thailand, by 1990 HIV prevalence had peaked and was declining; whereas in Southern Africa, HIV did not begin 12 spreading among the general population until the 1990s, and in the former Soviet Union, a rapid increase in prevalence began in the late 1990s... people acquire the condition; it results in a deficiency within the immune system; and it is a syndrome not a single disease In French, Portuguese, and Spanish, it is known as SIDA, the full French name being syndrome d’immunodéficience acquise HIV/AIDS Beyond North America, there was news of cases from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, especially Brazil and Mexico, and Africa In Zambia, a significant