Focusing on HIV/Aids in Africa

Few public health issues in modern times can match the scope and impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic especially in sub-Saharan Africa which accounts for about two thirds of the estimated number of global HIV/AIDS cases.1 Despite the widespread devastation caused by this disease and the compelling nature of the statistics much of the developed world has not been exposed to the human side of this pandemic—the people who are most affected by and living with HIV. It is their faces and their lives that can help communicate the true nature of this disease and in doing so encourage more people to action and advocacy on their behalf. With this goal in mind American photojournalist Andrew Petkun has sought to capture on film the reality of people in Africa living with HIV/AIDS. His work has taken him throughout the continent to such places as the WAMATA AIDS Support Group in Dar es Salaam Tanzania; Nkosi’s Haven a home for HIV-positive women and their children in Johannesburg South Africa; and House of Moses Clinic and Orphanage in Lusaka Zambia. Petkun’s portraits have been displayed at the World Bank in Washington DC the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama and numerous American embassies in Africa and they have been published by the US Agency for International Development in reports submitted to the US Congress. (excerpt)

Environmental health · Family medicine · Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) · HIV/AIDS Impact and Responses · Medicine · Virology