PHA-Exchange> AIDS: In search of a social solution

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AIDS: In search of a social solution

Publishers: TWN, Peoples' Health Movement
Produced by Third World Resurgence
Pages: 154
Price: Third World - US$10.00; First World: US$14.00 (Prices are inclusive of postage cost by air mail.)
Two decades after HIV/AIDS was discovered, it continues to spread across continents, infecting and killing millions and destroying entire communities. Sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for 11 percent of the total world population, has 70 percent of all HIV/AIDS infections in the world, making it the worst-affected continent.
Although one may dispute the alarming figures, the fact remains that HIV/AIDS has had devastating consequences for countries, societies, families and individuals. It is a global crisis and the outlook is worsening, with India, China and Russia projected to be the next centres of the pandemic.
HIV/AIDS attacks every sector of the society, affecting food security, depressing national economies, and rolling back the development gains of the last thirty or more years, as the African experience has shown, especially in the worst-affected countries.
The fact that the disease strikes the most active and productive groups in a society, i.e. persons between the ages of 15-45 years, is a threat to human capital, the functioning of social institutions and social stability.
In Africa, young people and children not only bear the burden of the disease, many have lost parents and family members to HIV/AIDS. More than half of the HIV/AIDS sufferers are women, a reflection of their unequal and oppressed status in society wherein their sexual and reproductive health rights are denied.
Underlining the pandemic in which women figure disproportionately is the fact that HIV/AIDS thrives in and reinforces conditions of deprivation, poverty, oppression, conflicts, social violence, and social collapse. Thus HIV/AIDS has to be tackled from a social and economic perspective, taking into account the global structures and forces that have led to social and economic crises and exacerbated the vulnerability of populations to death and diseases including HIV/AIDS.
This concept of health, in which the root causes of ill health are not found in the diseases themselves but are embedded in the social and economic conditions prevailing in society, was recognised in the Alma Ata Declaration. In 1978, governments of the world had committed to achieving Health for All by the year 2000, and Primary Health Care (PHC) was identified as the key to achieving it. In the PHC vision, health cannot be separated from social justice if Health for All is to be achieved.
Hence, combating social inequalities within a country and between countries is fundamental to Health for All. This means challenging the power structures and policies that engender ill health, be they governments, the World Bank-IMF, unequal trade agreements, structural adjustment policies, corporate-driven privatisation or free-market fundamentalism, all of which have severely affected public health systems particularly in the Third World.
It is within this context that the HIV/AIDS catastrophe has to be considered. HIV/AIDS cannot be tackled with technocentric and medical solutions alone. HIV/AIDS requires an integrated social, economic and political response, where health is recognised as a fundamental human right and health inequities are simply unacceptable.
This document is a joint effort of the Third World Network and the People's Health Movement. We hope that the articles and perspectives in this book can be a useful source for campaign and advocacy.
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