Alan Whiteside
Biographic Data
| ID | 91182 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alan Whiteside |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alan |
| FAMILY NAME | Whiteside |
| SIGNATURE | WHITESIDE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of KwaZulu-Natal |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1986-6096 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 66 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Is global health security worth 0.01% of our gross domestic product
You don’t think? But you can check
This paper focuses on the epistemic phrase ‘ I (don’t) think ’ when used by lay persons describing a medical emergency to call-takers triaging ambulance dispatch. Using conversation analysis, we analysed a collection of 100 cases of callers saying ‘ I think ’ or ‘ I don’t think ’ in emergency calls for cardiac arrest in Australia. Callers do not typically express uncertainty when they say ‘ I (don’t) think ’, but rather, use ‘ I (don’t) think ’ a…
Language barriers in emergency ambulance calls for cardiac arrest
In medical emergencies, phoning the ambulance service constitutes a high-stakes interaction. Call-takers rely on callers to provide information about the patient so they can promptly recognise the medical problem and take swift action to remedy it. When a language barrier exists between the call-taker and caller, this can add a further challenge, given that third-party interpreters are rarely engaged, especially for time-critical conditions such …
The next and last pandemics – The consequences of Covid-19 and its impact on the HIV/Aids response
Aids and Covid-19 in southern Africa
By the end of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, in February 2021, the numbers of cases and deaths in southern Africa were low in absolute and relative numbers. The BBC ran a story (which was later retracted) headlined "Coronavirus in Africa: Could poverty explain mystery of low death rate?". A heading in the New York Post said: "Scientists can't explain puzzling lack of coronavirus outbreaks in Africa". Journalist Karen Attiah concluded: "…
Managing the march of Covid-19
Additional informationNotes on contributorsAlan WhitesideAlan Whiteside OBE is the chair of Global Health Policy at Balsillie School of International Affairs, Waterloo, Canada, and also professor emeritus at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He wrote his first article on HIV in 1987 and in 1998 established the Health Economics and HIV AIDS Research Division at UKZN. He is the editor-in-chief of the African Journal of AIDS Research. E…
Caller resistance to perform cardio-pulmonary resuscitation in emergency calls for cardiac arrest
Planning and sustaining HIV response in the countries of the “risky middle”
This paper focusses on high-HIV middle-income countries termed the “risky middle”, i.e. characterised by a typology based on HIV burden and gross national income (GNI), according to which seven countries — Lesotho, Eswatini, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Namibia and Zambia — are identified. There is particular concern for “people left behind”, the factors determining a country’s ability to mobilise resources in the context of multiple development ne…
Hijacking the dispatch protocol
This article examines emergency ambulance calls made by lay callers for patients found to be in cardiac arrest when the paramedics arrived. Using conversation analysis, we explored the trajectories of calls in which the caller, before being asked by the call-taker, said why they were calling, that is, calls in which callers pre-empted a reason-for-the-call. Caller pre-emption can be disruptive when call-takers first need to obtain an address and …
Mixed results
Swaziland has the highest HIV prevalence in the world. It is recognised that young women, especially adolescents, are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection and bear a disproportionate burden of HIV incidence. The HIV data from Swaziland show the location of the epidemic, which is particularly high among adolescent girls and young women. This paper is based on research in Swaziland, commissioned because of the perception that large numbers of c…
Food insecurity and ART adherence in Swaziland
Faith-based organisations (FBOs) have long been involved in HIV and AIDS impact mitigation and humanitarian relief, but most are not equipped to intervene in the structural drivers of food insecurity and attendant health inequities. Acknowledging limitations is as paramount a task for organisational effectiveness as maximising strengths. This article reports findings from a study of HIV-positive care supporters who volunteer with a church-run hom…
We Smoke the Same Pipe
We draw on a study of a church-run community home-based care organization in Swaziland to explore how individuals living with HIV perceived caregivers' impact on well-being. Our primary concern was to examine how religion, as a heuristic practice of Christian-based caregiving, was felt to be consequential in a direly underserved region. Part of a larger medical anthropological project, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 79 community hom…
What does sustainability mean in the HIV and Aids response
Immense progress has been made in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Achieving and exceeding the AIDS targets for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was accomplished, in large part, due to an unprecedented financial investment from the international community. Following an $800 million dip in donor disbursements in 2010, the discourse has since shifted to the need for greater sustainability of funding. But what does sustainability mean? Current…
HIV/Aids and the South African state
This book is published by Ashgate Stable in the Global Health Series – the editor is Professor Nana Poku of the Health Economics and AIDS Research Division in Durban. It is a useful addition to the
Reckoning HIV/Aids care
The article is a descriptive case study of a community home-based care (CHBC) organisation in Swaziland that depicts the convergence of CHBC expansion with substantially improved health outcomes. Comprised of 993 care supporters who tend to 3 839 clients in 37 communities across southern Swaziland, Shiselweni Home-based Care (SHBC) is illustrative of many resource-limited communities throughout Africa that have mobilised, at varying degrees of fo…
An overview of the African Journal of Aids Research and its future direction
The key questions in the Aids epidemic in 2015
When humans are faced with threats they become inventive. There is particularly rapid scientific development during periods of conflict and tension. The Second World War gave us radar, jet engines
Ebola and Aids in Africa
This article examines the Ebola epidemic of 2014 and compares it to the initial HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. We examine similarities and differences between the two outbreaks and end with policy suggestions for future disease management
Beyond health aid
It has been argued that the international community is moving 'beyond aid'. International co-financing in the international collective interest is expected to replace altruistically motivated foreign aid. The World Health Organization promotes 'universal health coverage' as the overarching health goal for the next phase of the Millennium Development Goals. In order to provide a basic level of health care coverage, at least some countries will nee…
The end of Aids
Globally, in the last 20 years health has improved. In this generally optimistic setting HIV and AIDS accounts for the fastest growing burden of disease. The data show the bulk of this is experienced in Southern Africa. In this region, HIV and AIDS (and tuberculosis [TB]) peaks among young adults. Women carry the greater proportion of infections and provided most of the care. South Africa has the dubious distinction of having the largest number o…
South Africa’s Key Health Challenges
South Africa has an estimated 6.4 million people living with HIV, with more than 2 million already on treatment. The disease emerged in South Africa at the same time as the transition to democracy began in 1990. Although the country has seen considerable advances in many social spheres, the health sector has lagged. This lag is primarily because the HIV/AIDS epidemic results in an increased burden of disease in a cohort of people who would otherw…
Poverty, sexual behaviour, gender and HIV infection among young black men and women in Cape Town, South Africa
This article contributes methodologically and substantively to the debate over the importance of poverty, sexual behaviour and circumcision in relation to HIV infection, using panel data on young black men and women in Cape Town, South Africa. Methodological challenges included problems of endogeneity and blunt indicator variables, especially for the measurement of sexual behaviour. Noting these difficulties, we found that the importance of socio…
The increasing chronicity of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa
HIV was first described as a "long-wave event" in 1990, well before the advent of antiretroviral therapy (ART). The pandemic was then seen as involving three curves: an HIV curve, an AIDS curve and a curve representing societal impact. Since the mid-2000's, free public delivery of life-saving ART has begun shifting HIV from a terminal disease to a chronic illness for those who can access and tolerate the medications. This increasing chronicity pr…
Why HIV/Aids should be treated as exceptional
The idea that HIV and AIDS gets too much attention and funding emerged in 2008 with a call to end 'AIDS exceptionalism.' This article outlines a short history of AIDS exceptionalism - the idea that HIV and AIDS require a response above and beyond 'normal' health interventions and is privileged in terms of attention and resources when compared with other diseases - and the reasons for the backlash to this idea. We argue that in some settings HIV a…
Unplanned antiretroviral treatment interruptions in southern Africa
Adherence to antiretroviral therapy is essential for maximising individual treatment outcomes and preventing the development of drug resistance. It is, however, frequently compromised due to predictable, but adverse, scenarios in the countries most severely affected by HIV/AIDS. This paper looks at lessons from three specific crises in southern Africa: the 2008 floods in Mozambique, the ongoing political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe, and the 2…
Poverty and HIV/Aids in Africa
HIV/AIDS is the major threat to development, economic growth and poverty alleviation in much of Africa. And yet the full extent of the catastrophe facing the continent is only just being recognised, and still not by all. The international development targets set by the great and the good of the global community--or at least by those members of the community who attend the international summits that set these goals--do not consider what HIV/AIDS m…
Aids, security and the military in Africa
This article examines four accepted wisdoms about HIV/AIDS and African armies and in each case concludes that substantial revision is necessary in the light of emerging evidence. First, it appears that military populations do not necessarily have a higher prevalence of HIV than civilian populations. HIV levels in armies depend on many factors including the demographics of the army, its pattern of deployment, the nature and stage of the epidemic i…
The HIV/Aids epidemic in Ukraine
HIV/Aids and Development
Caller resistance to perform cardio-pulmonary resuscitation in emergency calls for cardiac arrest
Hijacking the dispatch protocol
This article examines emergency ambulance calls made by lay callers for patients found to be in cardiac arrest when the paramedics arrived. Using conversation analysis, we explored the trajectories of calls in which the caller, before being asked by the call-taker, said why they were calling, that is, calls in which callers pre-empted a reason-for-the-call. Caller pre-emption can be disruptive when call-takers first need to obtain an address and …
Unimagined Community
Journal Article Unimagined Community: Sex, Networks and AIDS in Uganda and South Africa Get access Robert J. Thornton, Unimagined Community: Sex, Networks and AIDS in Uganda and South Africa, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Pp. xxi + 282. £14.95. ISBN 978 0 520 2552 4. Alan Whiteside Alan Whiteside University of KwaZulu-Natal [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social…
That’s resources you see!’
We Smoke the Same Pipe
We draw on a study of a church-run community home-based care organization in Swaziland to explore how individuals living with HIV perceived caregivers' impact on well-being. Our primary concern was to examine how religion, as a heuristic practice of Christian-based caregiving, was felt to be consequential in a direly underserved region. Part of a larger medical anthropological project, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 79 community hom…
HIV/Aids and development
As early as the mid-1990s the US Bureau of the Census was making dire predictions as to the effect of AIDS on life expectancy, infant and child mortality and population size and structure in a number of AIDS affected countries. Despite this it was not until 1997 that the United Nations began to consider HIV/AIDS as a development issue. This article looks at how the international community (still) fails to take HIV/AIDS into account in setting dev…
South Africa’s Key Health Challenges
South Africa has an estimated 6.4 million people living with HIV, with more than 2 million already on treatment. The disease emerged in South Africa at the same time as the transition to democracy began in 1990. Although the country has seen considerable advances in many social spheres, the health sector has lagged. This lag is primarily because the HIV/AIDS epidemic results in an increased burden of disease in a cohort of people who would otherw…
Rethinking Swaziland’s HIV/Aids Epidemic
Global health and the politics of governance
(2002). Global health and the politics of governance: An introduction. Third World Quarterly: Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 191-195
Urban demographic projections and Aids
Towards a Post-Apartheid Future
Analyzes the political process in South Africa and the SADCC countries. The importance of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary politics in South Africa is discussed and political change in that count
Towards a Post-Apartheid Future? Political and Economic Relations in Southern Africa
HIV/Aids and Development
The HIV/Aids epidemic in Ukraine
The social and economic impact of HIV/Aids in poor countries
This review accompanies the Guidelines for Preparation and Execution of Studies of the Social and Economic Impact of HIV/AIDS. Its purpose is to supplement and complement those practical guidelines by presenting some of the literature which informed their development. The first section of the review provides some background to the epidemic and an indication of where on the World Wide Web up to date information may be found. This complements the b…
Aids in the Twenty-First Century
Essential reading for social and medical scientists and all those interested in infectious diseases and public health, AIDS and the Twenty-First Century examines the social and economic origins and im
Evidence of Aids mortality from an alternative source
This paper explores a way of measuring AIDS mortality in the absence of vital registration. It looks at the death notices in the major daily newspaper in Swaziland, The Times of Swaziland, and asks if these can be analysed to give a picture of changing mortality. It shows how clear trends can be discerned
Health in the former Soviet Union
Global health and the politics of governance
(2002). Global health and the politics of governance: An introduction. Third World Quarterly: Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 191-195
Poverty and HIV/Aids in Africa
HIV/AIDS is the major threat to development, economic growth and poverty alleviation in much of Africa. And yet the full extent of the catastrophe facing the continent is only just being recognised, and still not by all. The international development targets set by the great and the good of the global community--or at least by those members of the community who attend the international summits that set these goals--do not consider what HIV/AIDS m…
New variant famine
Through a Glass Darkly
The HIV/AIDS epidemic is the greatest threat to development in much of Africa. It is already the main cause of death in many countries, especially those in Southern Africa. However there is an absence of solid data on the scale and scope of the disease and how it is evolving. In this article we discuss the data on the epidemic – where it comes from and how it is presented. We note the limitations of the use of antenatal clinic surveys – which pro…
Using an undertaker's data to assess changing patterns of mortality and their consequences in Swaziland
This paper measures AIDS mortality using routinely collected data from one of two nationally operating undertakers in Swaziland. The business recorded a marked increase in the number of deaths it handled between 1998 and 2002, most obvious in the 0-4 and 20-49 age categories. Cost data reflects this increase in mortality. Prices for funerals and coffins have declined in real terms. Recorded causes of death were of little use in determining the ex…
That’s resources you see!’
Poverty, Aids and Hunger
Using the experiences of Malawi, one of the poorest countries on the African continent, to illustrate both the challenges that poverty creates, and the opportunities for change that exist. Poverty, AI
Introduction
Journal Article Introduction: 25 years of living with HIV/AIDS: challenges and prospects Get access NANA K. POKU, NANA K. POKU 1John Ferguson Professor of African Peace and Conflict Studies in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. He was formerly Director of the United Nations Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa. He is also the Programme designer and leading manager of the International Development Association…
Aids, security and the military in Africa
This article examines four accepted wisdoms about HIV/AIDS and African armies and in each case concludes that substantial revision is necessary in the light of emerging evidence. First, it appears that military populations do not necessarily have a higher prevalence of HIV than civilian populations. HIV levels in armies depend on many factors including the demographics of the army, its pattern of deployment, the nature and stage of the epidemic i…
HIV/Aids and development
As early as the mid-1990s the US Bureau of the Census was making dire predictions as to the effect of AIDS on life expectancy, infant and child mortality and population size and structure in a number of AIDS affected countries. Despite this it was not until 1997 that the United Nations began to consider HIV/AIDS as a development issue. This article looks at how the international community (still) fails to take HIV/AIDS into account in setting dev…
The making of vulnerabilities
The end of apartheid in South Africa has led to political-economic transition, the deregulation of cities, and increased population mobility, with growing numbers of people living and working in sub-standard and 'informal' urban conditions. These processes have created a fertile terrain for the rapid spread of HIV, especially in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Few studies have considered how the HIV epidemic's outcomes are interacting with other s…
Unimagined Community
Journal Article Unimagined Community: Sex, Networks and AIDS in Uganda and South Africa Get access Robert J. Thornton, Unimagined Community: Sex, Networks and AIDS in Uganda and South Africa, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Pp. xxi + 282. £14.95. ISBN 978 0 520 2552 4. Alan Whiteside Alan Whiteside University of KwaZulu-Natal [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social…
Rethinking Swaziland’s HIV/Aids Epidemic
Rethinking the conceptual terrain of Aids scholarship
BACKGROUND: While there has recently been significant medical advance in understanding and treating HIV, limitations in understanding the complex social dimensions of HIV/AIDS epidemics continue to restrict a host of prevention and development efforts from community through to international levels. These gaps are rooted as much in limited conceptual development as they are in a lack of empirical research. METHODS: In this conceptual article, the …
Exceptional epidemics
There has been a renewed debate over whether AIDS deserves an exceptional response. We argue that as AIDS is having differentiated impacts depending on the scale of the epidemic, and population groups impacted, and so responses must be tailored accordingly. AIDS is exceptional, but not everywhere. Exceptionalism developed as a Western reaction to a once poorly understood epidemic, but remains relevant in the current multi-dimensional global respo…
Household impacts of Aids
A life course approach was used to assess household level impacts and inform interventions around HIV risk and AIDS vulnerability across seven major age-related stages of life. Our focus was sub-Saharan Africa. We provided a qualitative review of evidence from published literature, particularly multicountry reviews on impacts of AIDS, on determinants of risk and vulnerability, and reports of large surveys. Areas of potential stress from birth to …
Economics (39 works) · Medicine (37 works) · Political science (37 works) · Economic growth (33 works) · HIV/AIDS Impact and Responses (29 works) · Development economics (22 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Law (17 works) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (15 works) · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (14 works)