Ms.
...Africa continues to be the worst part of the continent affected. A 2001 UNAIDS report indicated that by the end of 1999, there were an estimated 4.2 million South Africans living with HIV and AIDS (Kalipeni, Craddoc, Ghosh 59).
AIDS brings forth the gender, color, class, and national hierarchies that exist today. Racism, poverty, gender inequality, economical unsteadiness hamper AIDS prevention. In the early years of the AIDS outburst, there was a focus on risk groups, those not within the categories were considered clean. It is this "hegemonic process that helps dominant groups to maintain, reinforce, reconstruct, and obscure the workings of the established social order.(Schoepf 16)"
Socio-economic and cultural forces are driving the spread of AIDS. Ignoring failing health services, gender inequality, poverty to focus on high risk groups rather than on processes of economic empowerment and sociocultural change will lead to a standstill.
Culture plays a part in the severity of the epidemic, but more sweeping responsibility can be placed on the economic and political inequality in Africa.
Currently across the continent, AIDS is regarded as the "disease of women." A highly educated Zairian university official was interviewed in which he expressed a faulty knowledge of women as the primary carriers of the HIV virus; and, to deter further dissemination of AIDS, interning thousands of women for years would be an acceptable action. In several African countries, "free women" are made scapegoats, imprisoned, and raped. Accusations of witchery can have deep social effects and continues the demotion of women.
Some traditional healers tell older male clients to have sex with virgins in order to cleanse themselves of AIDS, promoting the idea of "sickness in the blood." Recently, new traditional healers have emerged claiming to have the ability to treat a...
View Full Essay
