I am normally a very fast reader - but due to various circumstances, I never really got round to finishing The Widom of Whores until recently, even though I started in late August! And it is definitely a great book!
A lot has been written about HIV and AIDS, and in some ways this is another book to that pile. It is however, possibly the most honest book I have read on the subject. The author, a journalist turned epidemiologist has spent a long time in the field of HIV and AIDS research - and her insights are facinating, and sometimes brutal. It is a frank account of not only how HIV and AIDS epedimics are badly managed in terms of response (not only in South Africa) but also of the politics, the ideologies and most of all the difference in cultures that are seemingly not understood.
Fundamentally, HIV is spread in two ways - unprotected sex and blood transfusions. But most HIV response teams do not tackle either of the core issues directly, largely for moralistic grand standing. Unproteted sex? People are not supposed to have sex before marriage. Or most people do not have multiple simultaneous partners. And drug abusers - why should they get more sympathy with clean neadles? The fact that some cultures do not consider multiple partners immoral - or that some prostitutes do not consider their work cheating on the partners have just not permeated up to the powers that be.
More than anything, the book exposes the flaws in the standard research practice of boxing things into neat categories. That, and the gross ineficieny of ideology driven health care support - even when the ideology is not religious.
While the book is centred largely in South East Asia, the lessons and discussions raised are just as relevant in South Africa. But, whether the book has any effect in fixing the world, that probably has a very a expected answer ...
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