Suchergebnisse

In areas where HIV prevalence is high, household production can be significantly affected and the integrity of households compromised. Yet policy responses to the impact of HIV/AIDS have been muted in comparison to outcomes of other shocks, such as drought or complex political emergencies. This article looks at the reasons for the apparent under–reaction to AIDS, using data from Zambia, and examines recent calls to mitigate the effects of AIDS at household level. Critical consideration is directed at proposals relating to community safety nets, micro–finance and the mainstreaming of AIDS within larger poverty alleviation programmes. It is argued that effective initiatives must attend to the specific features of AIDS, incorporating both an assault on those inequalities which drive the epidemic and sensitivity to the staging of AIDS both across and within households. A multi–pronged approach is advocated which is addressed not just at mitigation or prevention, but also at emergency relief, rehabilitation and development.

This issue of the Review is devoted to an examination of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa, an emergency which compromises the future of so many on the continent, yet is persistently underplayed. The depth of need it has generated has scarcely been measured and not even begun to be met. Although increasingly acknowledged to be grounded in social behaviour and systemic inequalities, HIV/AIDS is still treated predominantly as a health problem. At the same time, far more attention continues to be paid to the (admittedly crucial) issues of prevention and care than to the economic and social impact of AIDS and the ways it can be addressed and mitigated.
This introduction to the issue expands upon general points made in the editorial and reviews some of these issues by exploring two aspects of the multi‐layered context of the AIDS epidemic:


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The question of what African governments should and can do in the face of AIDS, and


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The viability and potential of the International Partnership on AIDS in Africa.

This issue of the Review is devoted to an examination of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa, an emergency that compromises the future of so many on the continent, yet is persistently underplayed. The depth of need it has generated has scarcely been measured & not even begun to be met. Although increasingly acknowledged to be grounded in social behavior & systemic inequalities, HIV/AIDS is still treated predominantly as a health problem. At the same time, far more attention continues to be paid to the (admittedly crucial) issues of prevention & care than to the economic & social impact of AIDS & the ways it can be addressed & mitigated. This introduction to the issue expands upon general points made in the editorial & reviews some of these issues by exploring two aspects of the multilayered context of the AIDS epidemic: (1) the question of what African governments should & can do in the face of AIDS; & (2) the viability & potential of the International Partnership on AIDS in Africa. 36 References. Adapted from the source document.

The use of aid to impose political conditions on recipient countries, to further democratic and government reforms or to punish non‐compliance with earlier demands, is a relatively new feature of the international aid regime. This article evaluates the proliferating donor and academic literature emerging on the subject. At the heart of discussion of democracy/ governance policies are debates about transformation of the state, its relationship to economic development and the decreasing extent to which considerations of sovereignty limit donor interventions. The author argues that, while political conditionalities may assist the development of democratic movements in Africa, there is an irony in that structural adjustment risks undermining the state reforms seen to be essential to them while, equally, democratisation may challenge the processes of economic restructuring being imposed.

This briefing demonstrates some of the tensions which arise in trying to define and describe problems of health in Africa: the tension of having available only statistics of known inaccuracy, aggregated across all population groups; the fact that attempts to describe status of health classically rely on describing incidence of diseases. Likewise, in looking at attempts to improve health, there is a tension between, on the one hand states, whose political economy militates against health, and, on the other international agencies who are thus reduced to a progressive rhetoric coupled with, in practice, a set of merely technical interventions of questionable impact.