Africas AIDS Epidemic - Essay Example

 Africa’s AIDS Epidemic The Apartheid government saw the HIV endemic as a challenge in blacks or gays and saw as neither a precedence deserving stern consideration nor action. Yet, during its besieged last days, it remained apathetic. Simultaneously, it was infrequent for black societies to ascribe to the scourge scare to the tormenting of a hated regime. Any attempt to take on the problem of the massive duty of transforming patterns of sexual affiliation was doomed, as it would have to surpass the shame or disgrace of the apartheid regime’s infamous population control scheme, which targeted the black societies (Schneider & Stein 723-31). After political liberation in 1994, a concerted social movement, which produced new norms in sexual behavior, was required. Without stable robust political governorship, this movement could not be acknowledged and protection attempts remained shattered and their impacts degenerated. The South African government required to take concentrated action, utilizing its widespread resources to concentrate upon particularly on the primary source of spread, after the established 100 percent condom use in sex workers paradigm in Thailand. This kind of arbitration, promoting 100 percent use amid South African youth early in the pandemic, could have had a remarkable effect on the scourge endemic curve (Karim and Abdool 37-40). Despite how grave a disease could be, developing a cure or treatment or means of preclusion is only half the fight. The remaining half can be rather more mysterious. Across the world, people who are supposed to know better drink, eat or have sex in unnecessarily risk means, or overlook medical danger symbols until it us too late. These headstrong ignorers are what thrill the South African journalist Johnny about the greatest medical controversy his nation has ever experienced. More than 1 out of 8 South Africans is HIV positive, Steinberg documents in his book. According to his report, every day roughly eight hundred South Africans die of AIDs related diseases, and more than a thousand additional people are infected. A current research established that in the preceding month, the average South African was more than twice as probably to have been to a burial as to a wedding ceremony. For a sometime, the South African government was reluctant about distributing antiretroviral drugs, but after the being pushed hard by an ambitious citizen’s rights movement, far-ranging distribution of antiretroviral drug begun. In ‘Sizwe’s Test”, Jonny Steinberg asks do so many people dying from AIDS related diseases not take them? And why do millions of South Africans at danger not even get tested for the virus. As way of answering these prevailing questions, Steinberg concentrates on Lusikisiki, a town in the nation’s Eastern Cape Province. It is South Africa’s most productive land (Hochschild 1). The memorable prose that Steinberg utilizes establishes the HIV/AIDS endemic in the idiosyncratic landscape of post-apartheid South Africa. The figures that he employs and quotes about HIV in South Africa are remarkable. Nearly six million people are HIV positive, in a cumulative population of 46 million. On a nominal basis eight hundred South Africans die on a day-day basis and the new daily infection rate is one thousand. HIV/AIDS are devastating all age of cohorts of the South African population, but specifically the young generation. Lusikisiki, is a quaint rural district in Eastern Cape, South Africa comprises of just about thirty villages and is a locality entrenched in poverty and home to 150, 000 natives. Steinberg interest was to establish a location where good anti-retro viral (AVR) cure to shield the duplication of the HIV virus. Thus, Lusikisiki matched his criteria. Ithanga is one of the townships that he visits. Here, like many villages in the constituency, there is just one shop to serve the entire community township. Sizwe Magadla, a 29 year-old is the one who operates the shop. Jonny Steinberg uses Sizwe as his translator and together they visit the health centers, which in connection with Medicine Sans Frontieres and the mysterious Dr. Herman Reuter have started a scheme of HIV testing and the distribution of ARV drugs post-apartheid South Africa. It is through the eyes of Sizwe that we see and his reaction to the potential of testing for HIV, as they embark of a voyage through Anti-retro viral medicine in Lusikisiki region (Steinberg 48). Understandably complicated by medicine, Sizwe understands that Anti-retrovirals are best cure for HIV/AIDS so far. He even beseeches a sick relative to undertake testing. In spite of being at risk himself, Sizwe has had unprotected sex with many women before currently settling down with one. Nonetheless, Sizwe is unwilling to take an HIV test. As a result, he becomes Steinberg’s telescope onto Lusikisiki and a tool of research himself. Steinberg unravels the narrative in a rather restful long-winded mode, in succeeding layers, as he gets the hang of Sizwe and the society’s complicated social system. To begin with, the first stratum has to do with the excessive lack of privacy. In Lusikisiki district, everyone understands precisely who is sleeping with whom. The houses, which are poorly designed, crowded with numerous cohorts of relatives, and even when couple attempt establish some space for their own, a set of eyes gaze at them disappearing into the forest together. Thus far, when one gets a HIV test report at one of the health centers, hundreds of your colleague community residents waiting behind you. In case one leaves immediately the nurse’s office, it dawns upon them that you are HIV negative. But in case one stays behind for an hour of therapy, they understand you are HIV positive (Hochschild 1). The next level has to do with fear and anxiety. Though Sizwe does not better still have sufficient money for a car, he is correspondingly success and is fixating over the jealousy of his colleague villagers because he has made his money from them. A rival shopkeeper who has is eyes on Sizwe’s enterprise, as well as with links to a criminal gang, also gives him constant worries. He despairs any sign of vulnerability could lose him his patrons or get robbed. Due to the extensive nature of the pandemic, the Anti-retroviral drug has to be offered at grassroots level in simple local organizations via general public and health practitioners. Failure to do so, the sick people would die waiting in queues at the health centers. Herman duty is to attempt to bring the health centre’s people e to life and make them treat the pandemic. When they arrive, health practitioners are in total denial and say that there is “no AIDS here”, and even by the moment they take off Steinberg leaves many nurses treating people unprofessionally and rebelling against massive workloads. The disturbance between service providers and the organizations are blended and the responsibility that encumbered MSF is to sustain that relationship. Their primary plan is through general population, to assimilate very optimistic energetic young people in their early twenties, distribute them within the health centers, and scrounge their energy to sustain the health centers alive and running (Steinberg 100). Due to the extensive nature of the pandemic, the Anti-retroviral drug has to be offered at grassroots level in simple local organizations via general public and health practitioners. Failure to do so, the sick people would die waiting in queues at the health centers. Herman duty is to attempt to bring the health centre’s people e to life and make them treat the pandemic. When they arrive, health practitioners are in total denial and say that there is “no AIDS here”, and even by the moment, they take off Steinberg leaves many nurses treating people unprofessionally and rebelling against massive workloads. The disturbance between service providers and the organizations are blended and the responsibility that encumbered MSF is to sustain that relationship. Their primary plan is through general population, to assimilate very optimistic energetic young people in their early twenties, distribute them within the health centers, and scrounge their energy to sustain the health centers alive and running (Steinberg 115). Johnny Steinberg is skilful at explaining the relationship between the public and organizations, but this runs analogous to another streak of “Sizwe’s Test”, where Steinberg disentangles the sophisticated reactions that black South Africans have to foreign Anti-retroviral medicine in post-apartheid South Africa. Steinberg successfully deconstructs the myths surrounding HIV in South Africa. He does this against the backdrop of rumors about HIV being carried in the needle of the nurses when they test you. He also adeptly deconstructs the myth that HIV is not spread through needless sexual intercourse, a reaction approved by the former South African President, Thabo Mbeki (Steinberg, 219). Johnny Steinberg is skilful at explaining the relationship between the public and organizations, but this runs analogous to another streak of “Sizwe’s Test”, where Steinberg disentangles the sophisticated reactions that black South Africans have to foreign Anti-retroviral medicine in post-apartheid South Africa. Steinberg successfully deconstructs the myths surrounding HIV in South Africa. He does this against the backdrop of rumors about HIV being carried in the needle of the nurses when they test you. He also adeptly deconstructs the myth that HIV is not spread through needless sexual intercourse, a reaction approved by the former South African President, Thabo Mbeki. Steinberg’s compelling account deals with the global concern of HIV/AIDS at a localized stage. It is a sophisticated by but informative voyage through the response to HIV, from the numerous illustrations of stigma, to unforeseen people supporting the Anti-retroviral treatment programme. Sizwe’s Test is both educational and intensely humanizes a pandemic that is frequently contemplated about as statistics as opposed to people’s lives (Steinberg106). Work Cited Hochschild, Adam. “ Death March.” Feb 10 The New York Times. Johnny, Steinberg. Sizwe’s Test a Young Man’s Journey through Africa’s AIDS Epidemic. New York: Basic Books. Print. Karim, Quarraisha A., & Abdool. Salim. A. “The Evolving HIV Epidemic in South Africa.” International Journal of Epidemiology (2013)31:37-40. Schneider H, Stein. Z. “Implementing AIDS Policy in Post-Apartheid South Africa. “Soc Sci Med (2001)52:723-731. Read More