The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa

#805
Title: The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa
Author: Helen Epstein
Publisher: Picador
Year: 2007/2008
352 pages

One of the better HIV books I've read recently. Epstein writes well and although this is information-heavy, it moves right along and I was sorry when I finished.

Epstein's focus is on infrastructure misunderstandings about African HIV transmission and faulty prevention and intervention strategies based on incorrect assumptions. She updates the reader on relatively new theories of HIV's origins and early spread (including a very clear explanation of how passaging strengthens a virus). She answers the important questions that were not addressed in Togarasei et al.'s The Faith Sector and HIV/AIDS in Botswana: Responses and Challenges, which are What did sexual partnerships look like prior to the arrival of Christianity, and does that affect HIV transmission patterns? Her answers are that in many of the areas currently hardest hit by HIV, polygamy/polyandry was socially acceptable, and that concurrent long-term partnerships may spread HIV more effectively than serial monogamy. If that's hard to picture, she's included a flip book. Really. It's the only scientific treatise I've ever seen with a flip book, and it's quite effective.

The last couple of chapters are less-well integrated and read more like articles. The last chapter ends abruptly and disappointingly. I would have liked at least a summary of the book's main recommendations.