Week 9: HIV/AIDS: A Humanitarian Failure?
Seminar Questions
- How and why have humanitarians and government tried to harness 'traditional' healers to help with HIV/AIDS efforts? What challenges have been faced in these endeavours?
- In what ways have humanitarians failed in their efforts to prevent, treat, and control HIV/AIDS in Africa? Why?
- How have Africans responded to HIV/AIDS humanitarianism?
Required Readings
- David Simmons, Modernizing Medicine in Zimbabwe: HIV/AIDS and Traditional Healers (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012), Chapter 5 [Course Extracts]
- Catherine Campbell, Letting them Die: Why HIV/AIDS Prevention Programmes Fail (2003), pg. 183-96 [Course Extracts]
- William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2007), Ch. 7: The Healers: Triumph and Tragedy, pp.211-36. [Course Extracts]
Recommended Reading
- John Iliffe, The African AIDS Epidemic: A History (2006), Chapter 8, Responses from Above. [Course Extracts]
Further Reading on HIV/AIDS in Africa
- Joseph R. Oppong and Ezekiel Kalipeni, “Perceptions and Misperceptions of AIDS in Africa,” in Kalipeni, Craddock, Oppong, and Ghosh, HIV & AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology (2004), pp. 47-57.
- John Iliffe, The African AIDS Epidemic: A History (2006). (Chapters 7-9 in particular)
- David Resnick, “Access to Affordable Medication in the Developing World: Social Responsibility vs Profit,” in Anton van Niekerk and Loretat M. Kopelman (eds.), Ethics and AIDS in Africa (2006), pp. 111-140.
Further Reading on Humanitarian Critiques
- Alex de Waal, Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa (2009).
- Linda Polman, The Crisis Caravan: What's Wrong with Humanitarian Aid? (2010)