A HISTORICAL NOTE ON AIDS IN AFRICA
A HISTORICAL NOTE ON AIDS IN AFRICA
The cultural politics about AIDSare now well understood in that their effect were to increase the velocity of the pandemic.Epidiemogists in government agencies designated entire population as "risk groups" obscuring differences among people assigned to different categories.It implied that anyone not included not included within the boundaries of stigma is not at a risk.Common in public health discourse, such constructions are part of the ' hegemonic process' that helps dominant groups to maintain, reinforce, reconstruct and obscure the workings of the established social order.
The risk group paradigm fastered belief in AIDS as an urban disease, both iomedical and popular circles.
High risk were limited to bounded groups " core transmitters' who included sex workers and their clients, the military, and long distance truckers who had multiple sex partners.
A corollary was that traditional sexual morality and practices would be spared.
Africa population being mainly rural they reasoned the spread would be limited. The critical scientists argument against this view by saying the leakages between AIDS and a century of migration of extensive male labour brought about transformation of family relations.
Many groups in civil society we're formed to determine the changes to stop the spread of AIDS.
The American AIDS fund dismissed corncerns by targeting prevention efforts to those identified as " core transmitters" The rationale was that as these people were the people who could transmit HIV to more than one person, such targeting would be cost- effective.
Prevention was essentially viewed as atechnocratic problem of behavior change based in access to information and condoms.Rarely were free free diagnosis and antibiotics made widely available, most often to sex workers.This significantly reduced infection in the population.
Afew research projects have included counseling of" discordant couples' in which only one partner is positive.
The labour intensive efforts were most successful in promoting consistent condom use when the infected was a female.
None of these employed the participatory action research methodology or other devices that CONNAISSIDA found so useful.Most prevention efforts to date have been limited in scope, and merely paid lip- service to the economic and cultural constraints that prevent many Africans from protecting themselves and their children from AIDS.
Owino John
The cultural politics about AIDSare now well understood in that their effect were to increase the velocity of the pandemic.Epidiemogists in government agencies designated entire population as "risk groups" obscuring differences among people assigned to different categories.It implied that anyone not included not included within the boundaries of stigma is not at a risk.Common in public health discourse, such constructions are part of the ' hegemonic process' that helps dominant groups to maintain, reinforce, reconstruct and obscure the workings of the established social order.
The risk group paradigm fastered belief in AIDS as an urban disease, both iomedical and popular circles.
High risk were limited to bounded groups " core transmitters' who included sex workers and their clients, the military, and long distance truckers who had multiple sex partners.
A corollary was that traditional sexual morality and practices would be spared.
Africa population being mainly rural they reasoned the spread would be limited. The critical scientists argument against this view by saying the leakages between AIDS and a century of migration of extensive male labour brought about transformation of family relations.
Many groups in civil society we're formed to determine the changes to stop the spread of AIDS.
The American AIDS fund dismissed corncerns by targeting prevention efforts to those identified as " core transmitters" The rationale was that as these people were the people who could transmit HIV to more than one person, such targeting would be cost- effective.
Prevention was essentially viewed as atechnocratic problem of behavior change based in access to information and condoms.Rarely were free free diagnosis and antibiotics made widely available, most often to sex workers.This significantly reduced infection in the population.
Afew research projects have included counseling of" discordant couples' in which only one partner is positive.
The labour intensive efforts were most successful in promoting consistent condom use when the infected was a female.
None of these employed the participatory action research methodology or other devices that CONNAISSIDA found so useful.Most prevention efforts to date have been limited in scope, and merely paid lip- service to the economic and cultural constraints that prevent many Africans from protecting themselves and their children from AIDS.
Owino John
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