HIV/AIDS, Illness and African Well-Being highlights the specific health problems facing Africa today, most particularly the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, the book presents not only various health crises, but also the larger historical and contemporary contexts within which they must be understood and managed. Chapters offering analysis of specific illness case studies, and the effects of globalization and underdevelopment on health, provide an overarching context in which HIV/AIDS and other health-related concerns can be understood. The contributions on the HIV/AIDS pandemic grapple with the complications of national and international policies, the sociological effects of the pandemic, and policy options for the future. HIV/AIDS, Illness and African Well-Being thus provides a comprehensive view of health issues currently plaguing the continent and the many different ways that scholars are interpreting the health outlook in Africa.
Contributors: Obijiofor Aginam, Yacouba Banhoro, Richard Beilock, Charity Chenga, Mandi Chikombero, Kaley Creswell, Freek Cronjé, Frank N. F. Dadzie, Gabriel B. Fosu, Stephen Obeng-Manu Gyimah, Kathryn H. Jacobsen, W. Bediako Lamousé-Smith, William N. Mkanta, Gerald M. Mumma, Kalala Ngalamulume, Raphael Chijioke Njoku, Cecilia S. Obeng, Iruka N. Okeke, Akpen Philip, Baffour K. Takyi, Melissa K. Van Dyke, Sophie Wertheimer, Ellen A. S. Whitney
Toyin Falola is the Francis Nalle Higgenbothom Centennial Professor of History and Distinuished Teaching at the University of Texas at Austin.
Matthew M. Heaton is a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin.
Reviews
Among the book's obvious strengths are that it includes contributions from African as well as non-African scholars and that it approaches its subject from different disciplinary perspectives, ranging from biology over economy and sociology to history. --JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORY, Volume 50, 2009HIV/AIDS, Illness, and African Well-Being links history, cultural exchange, economic exploitation, and diseases across Africa in a very interesting and holistic manner that captivates the reader. . . By presenting Africa's health issues in the context of its past socioeconomic practices, the book leads readers to envision better health outcomes that could have been based on the best of traditional and westernized Africa. --SCIENCE, March 7, 2008 [Alash'le G. Abimiku]
Falola and Heaton have edited a timely and useful book that will be of crucial interdisciplinary benefit to a wide spectrum of scholars and students, and to the general reader. The carefully selected contributors have produced essays on the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its vast implications, providing a scholarly gateway to the disease's further study in Africa and other developing societies. --A.B. Assensoh, professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies, Indiana University-Bloomington
HIV/AIDS, Illness, and African Well-Being is the most ambitious and refreshing work to date on the history of health and society in Africa. By the breadth of its canvas; its lively narrative; and its judicious and compelling analysis of contingent cultural, economic, and policy issues, this densely woven book will have wide disciplinary appeal to historians, social scientists, and public health and medical practitioners alike. It will remain the most authoritative scholarship on African health and medicine for many years to come. --George Ndege, Department of History, and the African American Program, Saint Louis University
Falola, Heaton, and their associated contributors have made a profound contribution to our understanding of HIV/AIDS in Africa. By addressing this difficult topic in historical and global context, and by keeping a constant eye to African understandings and perspectives towards disease, the editors and authors provide insights that are both scholarly and profoundly human. This is African Studies, and interdisciplinarity, done right!" --Jonathan T. Reynolds, Department of History and Geography, Northern Kentucky University