Paper short abstract:

In affluent countries HIV-infected persons now have access to anti-retroviral therapy. In many low-income countries only a minority enjoys this privilege. Development of specific anthropological research agendas, focusing on strategies for primary prevention, should be given the highest priority.

Paper long abstract:

Previously the only cure for HIV/AIDS was primary prevention of HIV-transmission. In affluent countries the situation changed dramatically, when anti-retroviral therapy (ART) became available and its costs gradually decreased. Many low-income countries (LICs) frequently have an inadequate infrastructure for distribution of drugs and suffer from lack of sufficient human resources, needed to continuously monitor ART of persons living with HIV (PLWH). Consequently, the majority of PLWH do not receive adequate ART. Advances in medical technology and drug development will most probably not change this situation in the most marginalised societies in the foreseeable future. The risk is, consequently, that the HIV-epidemic might continue to escalate in those societies. It is well documented that primary prevention of transmission of HIV is cost-beneficial for a society with a majority of the population, living below the poverty-line. For marginalised population groups in many LICs, primary prevention of HIV might remain the only viable alternative for inhibition of the epidemic. Identification of the most efficient and effective, culture specific strategies for primary prevention, consequently, must remain a high priority in LICs. The development of culture specific anthropological research agendas in each of these societies, consequently, should be the highest priority at this stage in time. These agendas should focus on the strengths of traditional institutions, change agents, local community organisations and strategies for strengthening interdisciplinary cooperation.

Paper short abstract:

Usually described as the most global disease of all times, HIV/AIDS has often been dealt through international public health programmes. How and with what consequences do global anti-AIDS strategies entwine with personal histories, local networks and national institutions and regulations?

Paper long abstract:

Over the past two decades, global AIDS fight has been mostly dealt through internationally coordinated programmes. A thick network of anti-AIDS initiatives have thus spread across the globe, causing a set of allegedly universal principles of empowerment and involvement of HIV afflicted populations - as well as the funds to realize them - to drop from national parliaments, supranational funding agencies and private philanthropic foundations in the West into tiny locales in the South and the East of the world. Passing through the filter of national legislations and institutions, these moneys and ideas hit the grassroots level, conveying an unprecedented amount of resources into the support of thousands little community-based-organizations and small NGOs run by HIV-positive people. In the wake of these facts, a world of opportunities opened up for before widely marginalized populations, endowing them with attention, ambitions, recognition, job and travelling opportunities. Meanwhile, a concurrent set of discourses, connections, tensions and open jealousies have come surrounding the implementation of "bottom up" strategies to confront with AIDS.

Based on a long-term fieldwork among communities of HIV positive heroine users in Southern China, this paper explores the generative power of global anti-AIDS programmes in the context of their implementation. By looking at how internationally funded grassroots public health programmes interweaves with personal histories, state's regulations and institutions, drugs and medical technologies as well as with new narratives of disease and drug abuse, the author wishes here to contribute to the widening of the current anthropological perspective over the transformative capacity of HIV into society.

Paper short abstract:

The paper reports on knowledge of and attitudes towards expressed HIV/AIDS among nomadic pastoralists in Somalia based on the findings of a nationally representative omnibus sample survey of pastoralist households carried out in April and June 2011. Comparing with teh Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey in 2006, there had been no improvement.

Paper long abstract:

The paper reports on knowledge of and attitudes expressed towards HIV/AIDS among nomadic pastoralists in six different regions in Somalia based on the findings of a nationally representative omnibus sample survey of pastoralist households carried out in April and June 2011; and compares these results with those on the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey carried out among the sedentary population in 2006.

This survey found 80% of all respondents had heard of HIV/AIDS. Overall 62% agreed that HIV could be contracted through sexual liaisons. Of those who agreed, 40% said that they knew how to protect themselves (e.g. condoms), i.e. 25% of all respondents. This compares with 15% in MICS 2006 survey who knew about condoms and the role they could play in preventing transmission of HIV. According to MICS 2006, 34% of women know that a healthy-looking person can have the AIDS virus; this survey found the same percentage (33%). Many women in 2006 erroneously believe that AIDS can be transmitted by supernatural means, mosquito bites and by sharing food; and this was still true in 2011.

Overall 86% of respondents knew that HIV/AIDS could be transmitted from mother to baby. Of those, 83% also agreed that the virus could be transmitted during pregnancy, 77% that the virus could be transmitted during delivery and 85% that the virus could be transmitted during breastfeeding. These percentages were about the same as in the 2006 MICS survey.

Comparing with the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey in 2006, there had been very little improvement.

Paper short abstract:

I intend to discuss how Brazilian AIDS activisms have emerged and were also reconfigured throughout the last 25 years. I will highlight some new issues, challenges and dilemmas which have been confronted by these organizations around politics, morality and memory work.

Paper long abstract:

This work intends to discuss how Brazilian AIDS non-governmental organizations and activisms have emerged and were also reconfigured throughout the last 25 years. Above all, I attempt to show the complex ways by which these social forms of organization and networks have constructed and defined their relations among themselves and with governmental agencies and health policies on the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I will highlight some new issues, challenges and dilemmas which have been confronted by these organizations in different social levels in Brazil lately. Since mid 1990s, I have conducted ethnographic, sociological, and historical research on Brazilian AIDS NGOs, particularly those ones which were created in cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, trying to apprehend their social connections with global flows and encompassing levels. However my fieldwork was mainly carried out in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro. In practice, I had to privilege some 'knots' of the social world of AIDS to achieve an empirical investigation. AIDS NGOs were the simplest starting point for a broader picture of the activisms and the politics of the epidemic in Brazil.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the policies that frame, at different scales, the management of HIV/AIDS epidemic in Portugal.

Paper long abstract:

We try to understand the uncertainties, dissonances and contradictions that characterize the approach to HIV/AIDS in the Portuguese context. This is particularly evident when comparing the macro-guidelines drawn up by international organizations such as UNAIDS, the political rhetoric of the official documents that establish the Portuguese national strategy to combat AIDS and the routines and practices of major institutions in the field.