Testing differences

The implementation of Western HIV testing norms in sub-Saharan Africa

Datos Bibliográficos

ID15098556
AutoresNicole Angotti (0000-0002-9206-5914, University of Colorado Boulder, autor de correspondencia)
Año2012
Volumen14
Número4
Páginas365-378
Fecha de publicación2012-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCulture Health & Sexuality (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1369-1058 • E-ISSN: 1464-5351
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13691058.2011.644810
PMID22214437
PMCIDPMC3934753
OpenAlexW2156288921
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas27
Referencias citadas26

This paper examines the implementation of Western HIV testing norms - counselling, consent and confidentiality ('3Cs') - in Malawi, a high prevalence, rural African setting. It considers the differential perspectives of three categories of stakeholders: proponents, implementers and intended beneficiaries. The proponents are members of the 'Counseling and Testing Establishment'. For them, the 3Cs are human rights imports that are worth defending formally, but not always worth prioritising in practice. The implementers are HIV Counsellors. For them, knowledge of the 3Cs as Western biomedical jargon distinguishes them from villagers, but places them in situations where the ethics of testing conflict with their moral concerns for those whom they were trained to help, thus they adapt them in practice. And the intended beneficiaries, the rural Malawians whose rights are meant to be protected by the 3Cs, perceive the norms as protecting themselves as individuals, but as harming rather than benefitting their communities. The case study of Malawi illustrates a tension between Western, individual rights-oriented public health norms and local concerns for the health and wellbeing of the imagined communities that they are meant to benefit

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV · Political science · HIV/AIDS Impact and Responses · HIV/AIDS Research and Interventions · Human Rights and Development · Medicine · Psychology · Virology