No Place Left to Bury the Dead
Denial, Despair and Hope in the African AIDS Pandemic
IntroductionBy the time I first stepped off the plane in Johannesburg in early 2001, at the beginning of what was to be a five-year stay there, a new sense of urgency had arisen over the issues of AIDS. In part, the country had finally awoken to the sheer magnitude of the crisis. By then, South Africa was home to an estimated five million HIV-positive people, more than any other nation in the world. But I suspected the real reason for the new energy was that, finally, it seemed something tangible could be done to halt the epidemic: treatment.
Efforts to prevent the spread of the disease had always seemed depressingly ineffectual and immeasurable; for two decades infection rates had largely continued their upward momentum. Most Africans did not even know their HIV status, and for those who did know they were infected there were few treatment options available; most were simply sent home to die. Communities were staggering under the weight of the sick, dying, and orphaned. The epidemic seemed unstoppable.
The five years that I spent living in South Africa an ... read full excerpt from: No Place Left to Bury the Dead: Denial, Despair and Hope in the African AIDS Pandemic ebook
