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Reviewed by:
  • HIV/AIDS, Illness, and African Well-Being
  • Meredeth Turshen
Falola, Toyin and Matthew M. Heaton, eds. 2007. HIV/AIDS, Illness, and African Well-Being. Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press. 414 pp. $75.00 (cloth).

HIV/AIDS, Illness, and African Well-Being, edited by Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton, is a collection of essays written mostly by Africans and as such it is a welcome addition to any Africanist's library. Culled from papers given at a conference on African health and illness held at the University of Texas, Austin, in March 2005, the volume frames the AIDS epidemic in a medical context, with biology rather than sociology, economics or politics as the lead discipline. Although the biological foundation of illness is the book's theme, the introduction by Iruka N. Okeke, a biologist, frames the AIDS epidemic in the context of racist beliefs in the superiority of Western biomedicine and colonialists' lack of confidence in the validity of African experiential approaches to health. In the first chapter, Sophie Wertheimer examines the role of racist press coverage of the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Part II shifts the discussion from racism to illnesses and conditions other than AIDS in a series of five historical case studies on waterborne diseases in Makurdi, Nigeria, smallpox in Saint-Louis-du-Senegal, malaria in West Africa, epilepsy in (Akan) Ghana, and disability in Nigeria. Although lacking conclusions that relate these histories to the contemporary AIDS epidemic, the chapters do place disease in a wider economic, social or political landscape.

The five chapters of Part III situate disease in the context of development: antimicrobial resistance in Africa; the epidemiological transition in sub-Saharan Africa; Buruli ulcer disease in rural Ghana; miners' illnesses in South Africa; and a historical study of the pilgrimage to Mecca from West Africa between the two world wars. [End Page 93]

The final section, comprising about one-third of the text, is centrally devoted to AIDS. The six chapters range from a consideration of the structure of international aid to AIDS programs; AIDS policies in Burkina Faso; a study of deliberate HIV transmission in Tanzania; an argument for the commercialization of AIDS treatment; and a study of AIDS knowledge, attitude and practice using focus groups in Zimbabwe; to the final chapter containing a series of proposals to assess the impact of AIDS on economic growth.

Like many edited volumes resulting from conferences, this one suffers from gaps and unexplored contradictions. Notably missing is a chapter on women's health, though a few do mention gender issues (chapter 10 on a mining community in South Africa and chapter 16 on AIDS in Zimbabwe). There is an obvious contradiction between chapter 15 on the commercialization of AIDS treatment and chapter 7 on antimicrobial resistance, which is not pointed out; nor does chapter 7 implicate either health providers or the pharmaceutical industry in the spread of drug resistance. The volume is not well served by the editors' brief overview, which summarizes the contents rather than analyzing the topics. And the lack of a final concluding chapter, which might have served the function of critical commentary, also diminishes the book's value.

Meredeth Turshen
Rutgers University
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