Aids Review

Meredith Turshen has collected articles reflecting the complex health problems of African women within the broad context of war and revolution, economic and work issues, and population growth as well as looking at 'just' health, and health programmes. Many ofthe articles are based on field research done by African people (some men) now writing or studying abroad. Here is a report on just one, but an exemplary one. 'Gender, Power and Risk of AIDS in Zaire' is a report on a CONNAISSIDA action research by Brooke Grundfest Schoepf, Walu Engundu, Rukarangira Wa Nkera and Claude Schoepf. CONNAISSIDA was set up to understand how AIDS affects the people of Kinshasa and Lumumbashi, Zaire's two largest cities with a combined population of more than four and one-half million, and the causes, including cultural ones, which affect the spread of infection. In Zaire, and the rest of Africa, AIDS is primarily transmitted by heterosexual sex. Contamination of the blood supply is another important factor, especially affecting women because blood transfusion after illegal abortion is all too common. In 1986, infection levels were reported to be between 6 and 9 per cent among sexually active urban adults, but in some East African cities up to 30 per cent test positive for HIV. In this situation, prevention involves convincing everyone that 'normal', 'natural', everyday patterns of sexual behaviour must change. Unfortunately, there is nowhere in the world where knowing the facts is enough to change sexual behaviour. By mid-1987 almost all of six hundred adults and teenagers interviewed understood AIDS to be a fatal disease, transmitted by sexual relations and exchange of blood. But one fact that

Feminism · Human sexuality · Sociology · Women's studies · Anthropology · Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · HIV/AIDS Impact and Responses