Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The dawn of the twenty-first century finds the world beset by the most devastating pandemic known to history. The slow-acting Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) spread silently in the 1970s, and was recognized in the US and Africa in the early 1980s. By the end of 2002 an estimated 25 million people had died of AIDS and more than 42 million people were estimated to be infected worldwide. An estimated 95 percent ofnew infections occur in the Third World, the majority in young people. Most will die within the next five to ten years because they do not have access to life-extending drugs. The rate of new infections, now occurring at 5 million per year, is expected to accelerate each year.Anthropologists study disease epidemics as social processes, charting ways that the spread of infection is shaped by history, political economy, and culture. While infection with the HIV virus causes the immune system damage that leads to AIDS, sociocultural processes, including sexual strategies adopted for survival, enhance the vulnerability of the poor and powerless to infection. Anthropological research on AIDS contributes to understanding complex, multi-layered relations between culture, social relations, political economy, and disease. It yields new evidence confirming the importance of quality biomedical health services, and of participatory interventions with respect to condom use among people ... log in or subscribe to read full text