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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Devastating Portrait of Man-Made Human Suffering, June 18, 2007
This review is from: 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa (Hardcover)
There are many tragic narrative accounts of AIDS, but Stephanie Nolen's book "28: Stories of AIDS in Africa" is particularly shocking. The reader is forced to confront the real-life human consequences of: the arms trade to Africa; the patriarchal family hierarchies which deny women access to basic health care, birth control, and autonomy over their own sexuality; the unimaginable health care resource gap between the Western world and Africa; and most disturbing, the conservative fundamentalist ideology of U.S. foreign policy and faith-based charities, which prevents dissemination of live-saving accurate medical information and condoms.
Nolen is effective at piercing the veil which readers inherently draw to insulate themselves from African AIDS carriers. You will meet HIV-positive mothers, grandmothers, and working parents trying to raise kids. You will meet bright, college-educated Africans who were living parallel lives and following career paths not unlike your own, until they were struck by AIDS. Some are church-going Christians, community leaders, or members of the educated elite. Readers interested in playing the 'blame game' will be hard pressed to find promiscuity or other so-called failings among most of the people depicted in the stories. Most of the victims practiced monogamy. You begin to appreciate the fact that we are HIV-negative not because we are morally or intellectually superior, but through the circumstances of fate and luck of being born in the West, which have granted us the 'privilege' of autonomy over our bodies, our sexual and reproductive health, and access to medical care and knowledge.
In many ways, this book is not necessarily about AIDS, but rather about the underlying factors in Africa which facilitate its transmission and prevent its medical treatment: rape, genocide, civil war, drug patent laws, misogyny, and racism. No one can be blamed for the emergence of the HIV virus, any more than one can place blame for the emergence of killer strains of the flu. Nolen's book is a wake-up call for the role that our political, business, and church leaders have played in exacerbating the AIDS pandemic in Africa. Through our activism and lobbying, we can reduce the transmission of AIDS in Africa, and alleviate human suffering
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One in a million, January 21, 2008
This review is from: 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa (Hardcover)
The introductory maps seize your attention. "Adult prevalence of HIV /AIDS" on one page and the people represented in the "stories" on the opposite. There's a swath of dark shading across southwest Africa - that's "Over 20%". To the east, the shade is lighter - "15 - 20%", with two darker smudges labelled "Swaziland" and "Lesotho" - islands of tragedy. At the top, "5 - 15%" predominates, lower numbers hiding the intensity of conditions. Stephanie Nolen's subjects' names run across the other map - the individuals whose stories are related here.
The numbers often lead to "AIDS fatigue" - too many big numbers; surpassing our ability to grasp them. The millions of people infected with HIV/AIDS seem beyond comprehension. After consulting the various estimates, Nolen surmises about 28 million for Africa, approaching the entire population of Canada. Each day, something like 5500 will die of the effects of the infection - two-thirds the population of my community. Every day. All year long. The adage runs: "One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic." Yet, that "million" represents that many "ones", and each one has a story. Nolen gives us those stories, making one person represent a million others. It's a formidable burden for the afflicted and the writer alike, but Nolen's skill effectively allows the reader to take it all in measured doses.
The opening story is, appropriately, a woman. In Swaziland, women don't turn to activism. They were traditionally forbidden to wear pants until 2003 and the right to own property was only granted in 2006. The little nation has the last monarch in Africa - who has thirteen wives and a fleet of autos. Siphiwe Hlophe had borne children with a man who delayed marriage for years. The discovery that she carried the virus was devastating - it suggested she was immoral, when it was her husband who had been philandering. That situation is one of the AIDS' story social disasters. The infection carries the stigma of immorality, a view widespread throughout Africa - and the West. Traditional leaders, missionaries and even family members vilified the victims as "immoral". It was also deemed an affliction of the poor, a mistake leading to many stressful family situations. Siphiwe, transcended many of these issues by announcing her infection and launching an AIDS awareness programme. Nolen gives accounts of other activitists, including a "Miss HIV Stigma-Free".
The other group most affected by the virus is children - either by being orphaned or by infection at birth. Among the former is 14-year-old Tigist Haile Michael of Addis Ababa who is the sole support for a younger brother half her age. Regine Mamba isn't an orphan. At her age, the term is meaningless. But Regine knows about orphans. When Nolen first interviewed her, Regine had 13 of them - all their parents were AIDS victims - by the book's Epilogue, the number had risen to 18. These parentless children lack education, opportunity and exist on a bare subsistence level lacking any skills to provide for themselves or siblings. Across Africa the number of such children is estimated to have reached 14 million today. What is their future? One path, of course, is always open - at least to the girls.
Is it entirely disaster and is amelioration impossible? There are signs of hope for researchers, but one of those will likely raise a few eyebrows. Agnes Munyiva has three children who live across town from where she works. Seeing up to a dozen clients per day, her job makes her a high risk for HIV infection, but that's not the part she keeps from her children. She's a sex worker in a Nairobi suburb, and she's very special. Agnes is HIV immune, a physiological trait that has many, especially AIDS researchers, scratching their heads, but see her condition as a means leading to prevention. The number of immune sex workers is small, and conditions providing immunity vary. Can enough be studied carefully to derive some answers? Does Alice truly fit the "one in a million" status? In what may seem a departure from the theme, Nolen relates the sad story of Western pharmaceutical firms keeping the price of Anti-Retroviral Drugs [ARVs] out of reach of those needing them. Compounding this tragedy of corporate greed is the role of Western financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to cripple the social services. Through Strategic Adjustment Plans [SAPs - one of the few truly indicative acronyms], Western investors demanded "downsizing" of government employees - read "teachers" and "nurses" - to pay off international debts, thousands were deprived of jobs. Lacking land and the skills to work it, those unemployed quickly became destitute. Add those to the young orphan girls and Alice readily becomes "one in a million". One of those will assuredly displace her from her hard mattress and mud-walled hut.
If the foundation of Alice's immunity, shared with a small number of Africa's prostitutes, can be unravelled, the chance of a vaccine increases. That's the quest of Uganda's Pontiano Kaleebu, who's been seeking that preventive step for years. Nolen's chapter on Pontiano is one of the most compelling of the collection. In it, Nolen explains how HIV/AIDS operates in the body, and why both prevention and cure are so difficult to achieve. While the vaccine remains elusive, the "cure" has made hesitant progress. But the drugs work only for a time, then a new form and schedule is required. That means testing, analysis, prescription, scheduling and instruction by health-care workers - many of whom were laid off. The drugs have to be available where and when needed at a price that people can afford. Not easily achieved in Sub-Saharan Africa.
As a Canadian in Africa, reporter for the Toronto Globe & Mail, Nolen is aware of how that nation prides itself on helping those in need. Accordingly, she offers a list of organizations providing that support for the suffering. Those 28 million are still living - minus today's 5500 - and their lives can be extended by ARV compounds. Nolen explains how you can help and what your help can achieve. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
All you need to know about AIDS in Africa, November 12, 2007
This review is from: 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa (Hardcover)
Stephen Lewis, the former UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa, called Stephanie Nole's 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa, "the best book ever written about AIDS". I must admit that I was skeptical- how could a relatively short book of stories encapsulate this massive epidemic? By the time I'd finished the third of 28 stories, I'd changed my mind.
Nolen successfully uses 28 human experiences of HIV/AIDS, gathered over years of reporting on the issue, to tackle each aspect of the pandemic: orphans, access to treatment, medical research, AIDS in conflict zones and within the military, at-risk groups such as truck drivers and sex workers, African political and international humanitarian approaches to HIV, experiences of children, women, elites, couples, families, activists, and the poorest of the poor. Her approach left me more knowledgable, and intermittently heartbroken and ready for action. The book critically examines the role of each actor in the pandemic, from international to local in the present and since the first recorded infection. It emphasizes the complexity of the crisis, most importantly its intrinsic links to poverty, as well as including a vital section on how you can help.
Effectively, Nolen has written a book that provides an overview of the political, historical, cultural, and economic realities of HIV/AIDS in Africa while constantly drawing the reader back to one fundemental point: HIV/AIDS is first and foremost a human issue. She quotes Nelson Mandela (he is the main character in the 27th story), "Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity; it is an act of justice" (353).
As someone recently embedded in the fight against HIV/AIDS (I am currently writing my undergraduate thesis on prevention programs, and have just returned from 10 months working with two grassroots HIV/AIDS organizations in Ethiopia), I would recommend this to laypeople and experts alike!
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