[lbo-talk] AIDS in the USA, AIDS in the World

Patrick Bond pbond at mail.ngo.za
Wed Feb 14 05:00:11 PST 2007


Chris Doss wrote:
> How is the disease stigmatized, if such a huge
> percentage of the population has it? Looking at the
> figures I get the idea that just about everyone in
> South Africa must know many people with HIV.

Hi Chris, lots has been written on this that you can find on the web, but I'm too rushed to reply properly. Will give impressionistic riff instead....

Needless to say, President Mbeki's bizarre stance has made matters much worse, as he ran a race/sexualized critique of what he took to be mainstream AIDS transmission wisdom. And in that denialism, plus all the other resources he expended on AIDS quacks, there never has been a proper public AIDS education campaign.

And so AIDS activists - especially women - face enormous problems getting their message across; and treatment isn't being taken up in many clinics simply because people are still too scared to admit they are positive.



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