A personal issue: feminist standpoint theory,epistemologies of ignorance,and perceptions of HIV transmission among northern Tanzanian wildlife conservation professionals

Drawing on ten months of qualitative research from 2009/10, we present a case study of situated HIV transmission knowledge claims among wildlife conservation actors in northern Tanzania. Utilizing feminist standpoint theory and epistemologies of ignorance, this article explores why a single professional group consistently articulated divergent explanations of the causal forces shaping on-going HIV transmission dynamics. Elite respondents were more likely to consistently attribute viral transmission to individual-level behaviors, while non-elite conservation actors more often situated HIV transmission dynamics in relation to extra-personal structural forces. This case study reveals the experiential grounding of HIV-related knowledge claims; illuminates the partiality of authoritative knowledge and the intersections of practices of power, embodied understandings and socio-structural location with hierarchical matrices of status and privilege; disrupts the presumed accuracy of certain forms of knowledge by foregrounding the insights of those in positions of subordination; and exposes ineffectual HIV/AIDS interventions in northern Tanzania.     

Faith-based HIV response in post-Soviet Eastern Europe: the case of Channels of Hope in Russia,Romania, and Armenia

ABSTRACT

Most of the data available on faith-based HIV response focus on Africa, which is the heart of the pandemic. This article investigates faith-based community-level HIV responses within Eastern Europe, by studying the implementation of World Vision International’s “Channels of Hope” faith-based HIV intervention. The intervention approach was developed in a high HIV-prevalence setting (South Africa) and then implemented across sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere – including three low HIV-prevalence Eastern European settings (Armenia, Romania, and Russia). Drawing from implementation and evaluation research, this article explores the nature, challenges, and potential of faith-based HIV response within low-prevalence, post-Soviet contexts.     

Advocating social marketing as ultimate weapon to fighting HIV/AIDS propagation,and related discrimination and stigmatisation

The spreading of HIV/AIDS in the African continent and related discrimination and stigmatisation towards people living with the virus have become a major issue to be addressed by communities, health organisations and governments in Africa. An effective way to successfully overcome these plagues necessitates the application of social marketing techniques and campaigns. However, when it comes to funding and supporting social marketing activities, African leaders deny the important role that the government could play in achieving the ‘HIV/AIDS free generation goal’ as well as making African societies a non‐discriminative and stigmatisation places for infected people. The present study intend to demonstrate through analysis of empirical data that social marketing is crucial in changing people's sexual behaviour and battling misconceptions that lead to discrimination and stigmatisation of infected people. In this light, African political authorities such as Congolese leaders need to understand the relevancy of this discipline in their HIV/AIDS policy.     

Community responses to vulnerable children in rural Zimbabwe: lessons from a partnership case study

This article explores a CBO–INGO partnership addressing vulnerable children’s needs in rural Zimbabwe. It engages with the global policy consensus that communities are crucial to addressing vulnerable children’s needs, alongside questions regarding community existence and definition among the poor. Inhabitants identified a community which was ascertained by a local and community framework. Partnership emerged as possible in the presence of interdependence and when power inequalities are acknowledged as chronically problematic. The INGO’s risk-taking, flexibility, and long-term perspective enabled it to go some way in implementing aspects of the partnership, and its emphasis on partner capacity building emerged as desirable.     

昆明市公安基层机关“防艾”资源状况调查

随着全社会对防治艾滋病的重视和参与,公安机关“防艾”斗争中的重要性和作用日益显现。此次问卷调查资料显示出基层民警及多部门合作的现状,还存在着一些实际困难和问题。1.法律问题上的困惑;2.职责困惑;3.经费制约。     

论乌干达防治艾滋病社区支持模式的社会法律制度

乌干达曾经是艾滋病肆虐最严重的非洲国家,但乌干达政府自1986年开始实施了大规模的防治艾滋病行动,建立适应乌干达国情的防控艾滋病工作体系。乌干达防治艾滋病社区支持模式始于1987年的坎旺卡社区支持活动,并迅速在全国推广,形成了政府干预和指导的法律机制、医疗和物资支持制度、非歧视的社区关爱机制、宗教团体等非政府组织参与机制等基本制度。通过加强立法,完善对社区支持模式的法律规范、充分利用社会资源、加强社区服务的技术指导和对艾滋病孤儿的援助等措施使该项制度不断完善。     

艾滋病防控的保安处分

艾滋病传播的特殊性以及对艾滋病进行医疗控制的低效率,使对艾滋病传播进行法律控制,包括刑事控制成为必要.而保安处分中关于传染病人的理论为对艾滋病传播进行刑事控制提供了巨大的空间和可能性.但对艾滋病人处以保安处分的可行性还值得商榷.     

TRIPS-Plus Free Trade Agreements and Access to Medicines

The battle over access to essential medicines revolves around the rights to issue compulsory licenses and to manufacture and export generic versions of brand name drugs to expand access. Global brand name pharmaceutical firms have sought to ration access to medicines and have used their economic and political clout to shape United States trade policy. They have succeeded in getting extremely restrictive TRIPS-Plus, and even US-Plus, intellectual property provisions into regional and bilateral free trade agreements. Asymmetrical power relations continue to shape intellectual property policy, reducing the amount of leeway that poorer and/or weaker states have in devising regulatory approaches that are most suitable for their individual needs and stages of development. While the overall trend is disturbing, some recent activities in the World Health Organization and evidence of greater unity behind health-based TRIPs flexibilities provide some grounds for cautious optimism.     

Who benefits from demand‐driven distribution of HIV/AIDS services? An analysis of the emerging CBO sector in Malawi

Community‐based organisations (CBOs) play a key role in Malawi's multi‐sector programme for responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In this programme they are funded in a demand‐driven manner—which means that only those areas that apply for funds to CBO services are blessed with programme benefits. This paper argues that this funding mechanism is not conducive to either distributing CBO services to areas most in need or enhancing downward accountability. Because areas most in need of services generally also lacked the capacity to attract project funding, the programme did not reach them. Instead, it tended to reach those areas with the greatest capacity to attract funding, though not necessarily the greatest need for it. Furthermore, those CBOs that were funded were unable to facilitate collective action in their communities because of elite capture of decision making. The programme, however, was relatively responsive to the communities' thematic demands. Thus, all in all, the elites were relatively more successful in representing the communities' wishes than in caring for all geographical areas in their constituencies. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.