Of the more than 40 million people around the world currently living with HIV/AIDS, two million live in Latin America and the Caribbean. In an engaging chronicle illuminated by his travels in the region, Shawn Smallman shows how the varying histories and cultures of the nations of Latin America have influenced the course of the pandemic. He demonstrates that a disease spread in an intimate manner is profoundly shaped by impersonal forces. In Latin America, Smallman explains, the AIDS pandemic has fractured into a series of subepidemics, driven by different factors in each country. Examining cultural issues and public policies at the country, regional, and global levels, he discusses why HIV has had such a heavy impact on Honduras, for instance, while leaving the neighboring state of Nicaragua relatively untouched, and why Latin America as a whole has kept infection rates lower than other global regions, such as Africa and Asia. Smallman draws on the most recent scientific research as well as his own interviews with AIDS educators, gay leaders, drug traffickers, crack addicts, transvestites, and doctors in Cuba, Brazil, and Mexico. Highlighting the realities of gender, race, sexuality, poverty, politics, and international relations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, Smallman brings a fresh perspective to understanding the cultures of the region as well as the global AIDS crisis.

Annotation The report evaluates current national surveillance capacity and assesses national responses of the health sector to the epidemic on a country-by-country basis. Importantly, the report identifies key areas in which specific interventions are urgently needed and the challenges ahead.

The first book on the shocking reality of AIDS in Latin America.

This fascinating book looks at two regions where rapid economic changes means that many health systems must undergo organisational transition and find ways of adapting to an ever changing context.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Health - Miscellaneous, grade: 1.00, University of Vienna (Institut der Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie an der Universität Wien), language: English, abstract: Around the world, in the last decades since the appearing of HIV/AIDS, the prevalence of women infected by HIV is raising faster than the prevalence of men. Although this development had been recognized soon, it was not posible to stop it. On the basis of these facts, I will have a closer look at the situation of women in Latin America concerning the disease and I want to review the “feminization” of HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, I will give an overview of two Gender constructing concepts of Latin America, Machismo and Marianismo, which I seek to challenge in its impacts on (the development of) programs and organsisations concerning the epidemic, and following, in women.