Why I Write about HIV
There is a credible argument to be made that HIV gets too much attention. It only causes 3.7% of global mortality. It's not a leading killer of children. AIDS interventions cost more and show less impact than vaccinating children or improving maternal and child care. It's an important disease, but it's not the only one we're fighting on this planet. We've certainly seen that the focus on funding for AIDS has been to the detriment of other kinds of health care.
But I write a lot about HIV, and there's a reason for that. When you study HIV, you're studying all of global health. The major factors in fighting HIV - prevention, treatment, quality of care, access to care, community stigma, non-medical methods of improving health (nutrition, for example) - are the major factors that run through all of global health. Learning about HIV teaches you about all global health issues. (Now you're going to tell me that the same thing is true of all global health problems. And to some degree, that is true. But prevention is not an issue with leprosy, and there is no stigma attached to influenza. With HIV, it all comes together.)
If you study improving access to ARVs, sooner or later you come back to building capacity of the health care system. If you study AIDS prevention, it brings you to methods of behavior change communication and the impact of social stigma. If you look at improving care, you run into opportunistic infections, the role of good nutrition, and the need for supplementary drugs like anti-fungals and antibiotics.
And, lastly, HIV does dominate the global health discourse (like it or not). The vocabulary of HIV has come to be used in all discussions of global health, and it is familiar even to people without much global health background. Learning to "speak HIV" will stand you in good stead when you are talking about any health topics.
COMMENTS (5)