Download or read book The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1993-02-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe's "Black Death" contributed to the rise of nation states, mercantile economies, and even the Reformation. Will the AIDS epidemic have similar dramatic effects on the social and political landscape of the twenty-first century? This readable volume looks at the impact of AIDS since its emergence and suggests its effects in the next decade, when a million or more Americans will likely die of the disease. The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States addresses some of the most sensitive and controversial issues in the public debate over AIDS. This landmark book explores how AIDS has affected fundamental policies and practices in our major institutions, examining: How America's major religious organizations have dealt with sometimes conflicting values: the imperative of care for the sick versus traditional views of homosexuality and drug use. Hotly debated public health measures, such as HIV antibody testing and screening, tracing of sexual contacts, and quarantine. The potential risk of HIV infection to and from health care workers. How AIDS activists have brought about major change in the way new drugs are brought to the marketplace. The impact of AIDS on community-based organizations, from volunteers caring for individuals to the highly political ACT-UP organization. Coping with HIV infection in prisons. Two case studies shed light on HIV and the family relationship. One reports on some efforts to gain legal recognition for nonmarital relationships, and the other examines foster care programs for newborns with the HIV virus. A case study of New York City details how selected institutions interact to give what may be a picture of AIDS in the future. This clear and comprehensive presentation will be of interest to anyone concerned about AIDS and its impact on the country: health professionals, sociologists, psychologists, advocates for at-risk populations, and interested individuals.
Download or read book HIV and the Blood Supply written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1995-10-05 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the early years of the AIDS epidemic, thousands of Americans became infected with HIV through the nation's blood supply. Because little reliable information existed at the time AIDS first began showing up in hemophiliacs and in others who had received transfusions, experts disagreed about whether blood and blood products could transmit the disease. During this period of great uncertainty, decision-making regarding the blood supply became increasingly difficult and fraught with risk. This volume provides a balanced inquiry into the blood safety controversy, which involves private sexual practices, personal tragedy for the victims of HIV/AIDS, and public confidence in America's blood services system. The book focuses on critical decisions as information about the danger to the blood supply emerged. The committee draws conclusions about what was doneâ€"and recommends what should be done to produce better outcomes in the face of future threats to blood safety. The committee frames its analysis around four critical area: Product treatmentâ€"Could effective methods for inactivating HIV in blood have been introduced sooner? Donor screening and referralâ€"including a review of screening to exlude high-risk individuals. Regulations and recall of contaminated bloodâ€"analyzing decisions by federal agencies and the private sector. Risk communicationâ€"examining whether infections could have been averted by better communication of the risks.
Download or read book Disease Control Priorities Third Edition Volume 6 written by King K. Holmes and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2017-11-06 with total page 1027 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infectious diseases are the leading cause of death globally, particularly among children and young adults. The spread of new pathogens and the threat of antimicrobial resistance pose particular challenges in combating these diseases. Major Infectious Diseases identifies feasible, cost-effective packages of interventions and strategies across delivery platforms to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, malaria, adult febrile illness, viral hepatitis, and neglected tropical diseases. The volume emphasizes the need to effectively address emerging antimicrobial resistance, strengthen health systems, and increase access to care. The attainable goals are to reduce incidence, develop innovative approaches, and optimize existing tools in resource-constrained settings.
Download or read book Tinderbox written by Craig Timberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking narrative, longtime Washington Post reporter Craig Timberg and award-winning AIDS researcher Daniel Halperin tell the surprising story of how Western colonial powers unwittingly sparked the AIDS epidemic and then fanned its rise. Drawing on remarkable new science, Tinderbox overturns the conventional wisdom on the origins of this deadly pandemic and the best ways to fight it today. Recent genetic studies have traced the birth of HIV to the forbidding equatorial forests of Cameroon, where chimpanzees carried the virus for millennia without causing a major outbreak in humans. During the Scramble for Africa, colonial companies blazed new routes through the jungle in search of rubber and other riches, sending African porters into remote regions rarely traveled before. It was here that humans first contracted the strain of HIV that would eventually cause 99 percent of AIDS deaths around the world. Western powers were key actors in turning a localized outbreak into a sprawling epidemic as bustling new trade routes, modern colonial cities, and the rise of prostitution sped the virus across Africa. Christian missionaries campaigned to suppress polygamy, but left in its place fractured sexual cultures that proved uncommonly vulnerable to HIV. Equally devastating was the gradual loss of the African ritual of male circumcision, which recent studies have shown offers significant protection against infection. Timberg and Halperin argue that the same Western hubris that marked the colonial era has hamstrung the effort to fight HIV. From the United Nations AIDS program to the Bush administration's historic relief campaign, global health officials have favored well-meaning Western approaches--abstinence campaigns, condom promotion, HIV testing--that have proven ineffective in slowing the epidemic in Africa. Meanwhile they have overlooked homegrown African initiatives aimed squarely at the behaviors spreading the virus. In a riveting narrative that stretches from colonial Leopoldville to 1980s San Francisco to South Africa today, Tinderbox reveals how human hands unleashed this epidemic and can now overcome it, if only we learn the lessons of the past.
Download or read book Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic written by Richard A. McKay and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now an award-winning documentary feature film The search for a “patient zero”—popularly understood to be the first person infected in an epidemic—has been key to media coverage of major infectious disease outbreaks for more than three decades. Yet the term itself did not exist before the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. How did this idea so swiftly come to exert such a strong grip on the scientific, media, and popular consciousness? In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay interprets a wealth of archival sources and interviews to demonstrate how this seemingly new concept drew upon centuries-old ideas—and fears—about contagion and social disorder. McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaétan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed—and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak. McKay shows how investigators from the US Centers for Disease Control inadvertently created the term amid their early research into the emerging health crisis; how an ambitious journalist dramatically amplified the idea in his determination to reframe national debates about AIDS; and how many individuals grappled with the notion of patient zero—adopting, challenging and redirecting its powerful meanings—as they tried to make sense of and respond to the first fifteen years of an unfolding epidemic. With important insights for our interconnected age, Patient Zero untangles the complex process by which individuals and groups create meaning and allocate blame when faced with new disease threats. What McKay gives us here is myth-smashing revisionist history at its best.
Download or read book Global Institutions and the HIV AIDS Epidemic written by Franklyn Lisk and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by a leading expert in the field, this book provides a clear and incisive analysis of the different perspectives of the global response to HIV/AIDS, and the role of the different global institutions involved. The text highlights HIV/AIDS as an exceptional global epidemic in terms of the severity of its impact as a humanitarian tragedy of unprecedented proportion, its multi-dimensional characteristics, and its continuous evolution over more than two decades. The careful analysis in this volume critically reviews key issues in the global response, including: HIV/AIDS as a development challenge North-South power relationships and tensions international and regional partnerships between donor governments and recipient countries governance of global institutions and impact on the capacity of developing countries to respond effectively to the epidemic prevention versus treatment as options in HIV/AIDS services how to make the money work in support of effective AIDS financing. Providing a comprehensive but easy to read and compact overview of history, trends and impacts of HIV/AIDS and the global efforts to respond effectively this book is essential reading for all students of international relations, health studies and international organizations.
Download or read book Understanding the HIV AIDS Epidemic in the United States written by Eric R. Wright and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-06-07 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States using the concept of syndemics to contextualize the risk of both well-known, and a few lesser-known, subpopulations that experience disproportionately high rates of HIV and/or AIDS within the United States. Since discovery, HIV/AIDS has exposed a number of social, psychological, and biological aspects of disease transmission. The concept of “syndemics,” or “synergistically interacting epidemics” has emerged as a powerful framework for understanding both the epidemiological patterns and the myriad of problems associated with HIV/AIDS around the world and within the United States. The book considers the disparities in HIV/AIDS in relation to social aspects, risk behavior and critical illness comorbidities. It updates and enhances our understanding of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States and contributes to the expanding literature on the role of syndemics in shaping the public’s health.
Download or read book HIV AIDS A Very Short Introduction written by Alan Whiteside OBE and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-01-24 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HIV/AIDS is without doubt the worst epidemic to hit humankind since the Black Death. The first case was identified in 1981; by 2004 it was estimated that about 40 million people were living with the disease, and about 20 million had died. Despite rapid scientific advances there is still no cure and the drugs are expensive and toxic. Because of controversies and taboos surrounding safe drug usage and prostitution, the numbers of people infected continues to rise. However, it is in the developing world and especially parts of Africa that the real catastrophe is unfolding. In some of the worst affected countries life expectancy has plummeted to below 35 years, which has led to a serious decline in economic growth, a sharp rise in orphaning, and the imminent collapse of health care systems. The news is not all bleak though. There have been unprecedented breakthroughs in understanding diseases and developing drugs. Because the disease is so closely linked to sexual activity and drug use, the need to understand and change behaviour has caused us to reassess what it means to be human and how we should operate in the globalising world. This Very Short Introduction provides an introduction to the disease, tackling the science, the international and local politics, the fascinating demographics, and the devastating consequences of the disease, and explores how we have — and must — respond. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Preventing and Mitigating AIDS in Sub Saharan Africa written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1996-03-28 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to affect all facets of life throughout the subcontinent. Deaths related to AIDS have driven down the life expectancy rate of residents in Zambia, Kenya, and Uganda with far-reaching implications. This book details the current state of the AIDS epidemic in Africa and what is known about the behaviors that contribute to the transmission of the HIV infection. It lays out what research is needed and what is necessary to design more effective prevention programs.
Download or read book Chimp the River How AIDS Emerged from an African Forest written by David Quammen and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-02-16 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this "frightening and fascinating masterpiece" (Walter Isaacson), David Quammen explores the true origins of HIV/AIDS. The real story of AIDS—how it originated with a virus in a chimpanzee, jumped to one human, and then infected more than 60 million people—is very different from what most of us think we know. Recent research has revealed dark surprises and yielded a radically new scenario of how AIDS began and spread. Excerpted and adapted from the book Spillover, with a new introduction by the author, Quammen's hair-raising investigation tracks the virus from chimp populations in the jungles of southeastern Cameroon to laboratories across the globe, as he unravels the mysteries of when, where, and under what circumstances such a consequential "spillover" can happen. An audacious search for answers amid more than a century of data, The Chimp and the River tells the haunting tale of one of the most devastating pandemics of our time.
Download or read book HIV AIDS Pandemic written by Cindy Gustafson-Brown and published by Cognella Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-06 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Modeling HIV Transmission and AIDS in the United States written by Herbert W. Hethcote and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The disease that came to be called acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was first identified in the summer of 1981. By that time, nearly 100,000 persons in the United States may have been infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). By the time the routes of transmission were clearly identified and HIV was established as the cause of AIDS in 1983, over 300,000 people may have been infected. That number has continued to increase, with approximately 1,000,000 Americans believed to be infected in 1991. The epidemic is of great public health concern because HlV is infectious, causes severe morbidity and death in most if not all of those infected, and often occurs in relatively young persons. In addition, the cost of medical care for a person with HIV disease is high, and the medical care needs of HIV-infected persons place a severe burden on the medical care systems in many areas. Understanding and controlling the HIV epidemic is a particularly difficult challenge. The long and variable period between HIV infection and clinical disease makes it difficult both to forecast the future magnitude of the epidemic, which is important for health care planning, and to estimate the number infected in the last several years, which is important for monitoring the current status of the epidemic.
Download or read book Society s Choices written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1995-03-27 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breakthroughs in biomedicine often lead to new life-giving treatments but may also raise troubling, even life-and-death, quandaries. Society's Choices discusses ways for people to handle today's bioethics issues in the context of America's unique history and cultureâ€"and from the perspectives of various interest groups. The book explores how Americans have grappled with specific aspects of bioethics through commission deliberations, programs by organizations, and other mechanisms and identifies criteria for evaluating the outcomes of these efforts. The committee offers recommendations on the role of government and professional societies, the function of commissions and institutional review boards, and bioethics in health professional education and research. The volume includes a series of 12 superb background papers on public moral discourse, mechanisms for handling social and ethical dilemmas, and other specific areas of controversy by well-known experts Ronald Bayer, Martin Benjamin, Dan W. Brock, Baruch A. Brody, H. Alta Charo, Lawrence Gostin, Bradford H. Gray, Kathi E. Hanna, Elizabeth Heitman, Thomas Nagel, Steven Shapin, and Charles M. Swezey.
Download or read book The AIDS Generation written by Perry N. Halkitis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For young gay men who came of age in the United States in the 1980s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic was a formative experience in fear, hardship, and loss. Those who were diagnosed before 1996 suffered an exceptionally high rate of mortality, and the survivors -- both the infected individuals and those close to them -- today constitute a "bravest generation" in American history. The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience examines the strategies for survival and coping employed by these HIV-positive gay men, who together constitute the first generation of long-term survivors of the disease. Through interviews conducted by the author, it narrates the stories of gay men who have survived since the early days of the epidemic; documents and delineates the strategies and behaviors enacted by men of this generation to survive it; and examines the extent to which these approaches to survival inform and are informed by the broad body of literature on resilience and health. The stories and strategies detailed here, all used to combat the profound physical, emotional, and social challenges faced by those in the crosshairs of the AIDS epidemic, provide a gateway for understanding how individuals cope with chronic and life-threatening diseases. Halkitis takes readers on a journey of first-hand data collection (the interviews themselves), the popular culture representations of these phenomena, and his own experiences as one of the men of the AIDS generation. This riveting account will be of interest to health practitioners and historians throughout the clinical and social sciences -- or to anyone with an interest in this important chapter in social history. Cover photo courtesy of Fire Island Pines Historical Preservation Society.
Download or read book And The Band Played on written by Randy Shilts and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2000-04-09 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigative account of the medical, sexual, and scientific questions surrounding the spread of AIDS across the country.
Download or read book Disease and Mortality in Sub Saharan Africa written by Dean T. Jamison and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current data and trends in morbidity and mortality for the sub-Saharan Region as presented in this new edition reflect the heavy toll that HIV/AIDS has had on health indicators, leading to either a stalling or reversal of the gains made, not just for communicable disorders, but for cancers, as well as mental and neurological disorders.
Download or read book The AIDS Pandemic written by Lawrence O. Gostin and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2005-11-16 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection of essays, Lawrence O. Gostin, an internationally recognized scholar of AIDS law and policy, confronts the most pressing and controversial issues surrounding AIDS in America and around the world. He shows how HIV/AIDS affects the entire population--infected and uninfected--by influencing our social norms, our economy, and our country's role as a world leader. Now in the third decade of this pandemic, the nation and the world still fail to respond to the needs of persons living with HIV/AIDS and continue to tolerate injustice in their treatment, Gostin argues. AIDS, both in the United States and globally, deeply affects poor and marginalized populations, and many U.S. policies are based on conservative moral values rather than public health and social justice concerns. Gostin tackles the hard social, legal, political, and ethical issues of the HIV/AIDS pandemic: privacy and discrimination, travel and immigration, clinical trials and drug pricing, exclusion of HIV-infected health care workers, testing and treatment of pregnant women and infants, and needle-exchange programs. This book provides an inside account of AIDS policy debates together with incisive commentary. It is indispensable reading for advocates, scholars, health professionals, lawyers, and the concerned public.
