The Politics Of Global Aids

This timely book looks critically at the policy response to AIDS and its institutionalization over time. It raises important questions about who benefits, who decides, and in whose interests decisions are made. Taking the early international response to the epidemic as its starting point, and focusing on the work of agencies such as UNAIDS, it identifies two logics underpinning strategy to date. First, the idea of HIV as a ‘global emergency’ which calls for an extraordinary response. Second, the claim that medicine offers the best way of dealing with it. The book also identified the rise of something more dominant – namely Global AIDS – or the logic and system that seeks to displace all others. Promulgated by UNAIDS and its partner agencies, Global AIDS claims to speak the truth on behalf of affected persons and communities everywhere. Founded on solidarity claims concerning the international HIV movement, and distinctive knowledge practices which determine what needs to be done. Alternative views about the nature of the epidemic or the best response are rejected as irrelevant for falling outside the master framing of the epidemic that Global AIDS provides. But to what extent is this biomedical and emergency framing of the epidemic sustainable, and to what extent does it speak to the sustainability of lives as affected people wish them to be lived? Does scientific and biomedical advance provide all the answers, or do important social and political issues need to be addressed? This book provides an innovative framework with which to think about these and other sustainability challenges for the future.

This book examines the global governance of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, interrogating the role of this international system and global discourse on HIV/AIDS interventions. The geographical focus is Sub-Saharan Africa since the region has been at the forefront of these interventions. There is a need to understand the relationship between the international political environment and the impact of resulting policies on HIV/AIDS in the context of people’s lives. Hakan Seckinelgin points out a certain disjuncture between this governance structures and the way people experience the disease in their everyday lives. Although the structure allows people to emerge as policy relevant target groups and beneficiaries, the articulation of needs and design of policy interventions tends to reflect international priorities rather than people’s thinking on the problem. In other words, he argues that while the international interventions highlight the importance attributed to the HIV/AIDS problem, the nature of the system does not allow interventions to be far reaching and sustainable. Offering a critical contribution to the understanding of the problems in HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, International Politics of HIV/AIDS will be invaluable to students and researchers of health, international politics and development.

In the mid-1990s, experts predicted that India would face the world's biggest AIDS epidemic by 2000. Though a crisis at this scale never fully materialized, global public health institutions, donors, and the Indian state initiated a massive effort to prevent it. HIV prevention programs channeled billions of dollars toward those groups designated as at-risk—sex workers and men who have sex with men. At Risk captures this unique moment in which these criminalized and marginalized groups reinvented their "at-risk" categorization and became central players in the crisis response. The AIDS crisis created a contradictory, conditional, and temporary opening for sex-worker and LGBTIQ activists to renegotiate citizenship and to make demands on the state. Working across India and Kenya, Gowri Vijayakumar provides a fine-grained account of the political struggles at the heart of the Indian AIDS response. These range from everyday articulations of sexual identity in activist organizations in Bangalore to new approaches to HIV prevention in Nairobi, where prevention strategies first introduced in India are adapted and circulate, as in the global AIDS field more broadly. Vijayakumar illuminates how the politics of gender, sexuality, and nationalism shape global crisis response. In so doing, she considers the precarious potential for social change in and after a crisis.

"With more than 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS, and more than 25 million dead from related diseases since the early 1980s, the need to understand the causes and impact of the pandemic is manifest. In response, The Global Politics of AIDS explores power and politics at multiple levels, ranging from individual behavior to corporate boardrooms to international institutions and forces." "The authors combine careful scholarship with sensitivity to both the suffering of those afflicted and the frustration of those seeking to bring about meaningful change. All royalties from sales of the book will be donated to AIDS-related charities."--BOOK JACKET.

HIV/AIDS is the major political challenge of our time. Based on empirical observations from all over the world, this book examines how HIV/AIDS has become increasingly transnational, as nation states have extended their programmes across borders, and transnational networks have increased their activities.

ÔHIV/AIDS remains a major global health problem, despite the progress made in its prevention and treatment. Addressing this problem is not only a matter of more and better drugs, they need to be widely accessible and be affordable to the poor. This book makes, with a much welcomed interdisciplinary approach, an excellent contribution to understanding how the intellectual property regime can influence health policies and the lives of millions of people affected by the disease. The analysis provided by the various authors that contributed to this book will be of relevance not only to those working in the area of HIV/AIDS, but to those more broadly interested in public health governance and the role of intellectual property rights.Õ Ð Carlos Correa, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina ÔThis is an important, innovative and, at times, controversial collection. Inter-disciplinary in approach, this collection will have appeal to those concerned with the global injustice in the context of HIV/AIDS. Investigating the legal, political and economic determinants of access to essential medicines, this is thought provoking collection which will resonate with many in both the academic and public policy community.Õ Ð Bryan Mercurio, The Chinese University of Hong Kong This important book brings together leading scholars from multiple disciplines, including intellectual property, human rights, public health, and development studies, as well as activists to critically reflect on the global health governance regime. The Global Governance of HIV/AIDS explores the implications of high international intellectual property standards for access to essential medicines in developing countries. With a focus on HIV/AIDS governance, the volume provides a timely analysis of the international legal and political landscape, the relationship between human rights and intellectual property, and emerging issues in global health policy. It concludes with concrete strategies on how to improve access to HIV/AIDS medicines. This interdisciplinary, global, and up-to-date book will strongly appeal to academics in law, international relations, health policy and public policy, as well as students, policymakers and activists.

The issue of universal and free access to treatment is now a fundamental goal of the international community. Based on original data and field studies from Brazil, Thailand, India and Sub-Saharan Africa under the aegis of ANRS (the French nationalagency for research on Aids and viral hepatitis, this timely and significant book both assesses the progress made in achieving this objective and presents a rigorous diagnosis of the obstacles that remain. Placing particular emphasis on the constraints imposed by TRIPS as well as the poor state of most public health systems in Southern countries, the contributing authors provide a comprehensive analysis of the huge barriers that have yet to be overcome in order to attain free access to care and offer innovative suggestions of how they might be confronted. In doing this, the book renews our understanding of the political economy of HIV/AIDS in these vast regions, where the disease continues to spread with devastating social and economic consequences. This volume will be a valuable addition to the current literature on HIV/AIDS in developing countries and will find widespread appeal amongst students and academics studying economics, sociology and public health. It will also be of interest to international organizations and professional associations involved in the fight against pandemics.

Peter Piot, founding executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), reports on the influence of civil society in international relations and traditional partisan divides. AIDS thrust health into national and international politics where, he argues, it rightly belongs. The global reaction to AIDS over the past decade is the positive result of this partnership, showing what can be acheved when science, politics, and policy converge on the ground. Piot describes funding mechanisms for AIDS, the first international declarations, the response of the UN system, the establishment of UNAIDS, the response of high income countries to AIDS, The Global Fund and PEPFAR as game-changers, and lessons for other health problems.