HIV/AIDS in Africa: which way for policymakers and researchers? An interview with Alex de Waal

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Notes

1 Jeffrey David Sachs is an American economist and currently a professor on the faculty at the School of International and Public Affairs and Director of the Earth Institute, both at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He is known for his work with international agencies on problems of poverty reduction, debt cancellation, and disease control, especially HIV/AIDS, for the developing world. He advocated distribution of free insecticide-treated bed nets to combat malaria.

2 Patricia Parker founded the charity, Kids for Kids, in 2001. It was created to help children struggling to survive in remote villages in Darfur, Sudan. It has provided water-pumps that supply about 50,000 villagers. In 2005 the charity supplied goats that gave an estimated 11,000 children access to vitamin0rich milk.

3 The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR/Emergency Plan) was a commitment of US$15 billion over five years (2003–8) from United States President George W. Bush to fight the global HIV/AIDS pandemic.

4 Alan Whiteside is Professor of Economics and Director of the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division UKZN (University of KwaZulu-Natal). He is a member of the Governing Council of the International AIDS Society. He is a member of the Board of the Young Heroes orphan support initiative in Swaziland. From 2003 to 2006 he served on the UN Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa. He has written extensively on AIDS. The Treatment Action Campaign is a South African AIDS activist organization that was founded in 1998. It combines the issue-specific direct action tactics of North American AIDS groups like ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) with the culture and organization of the South African trade union and anti-apartheid movements. Mark Hayward is a key member of the TAC. Paul Farmer is an American anthropologist and physician. His medical specialty is infectious diseases. He is the author of AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, and specializes in research into the origins of the epidemic. Jim Yong Kim is Professor of Medicine and Social Medicine and Chair of the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is a former director of the World Health Organization HIV/AIDS department. A former senior advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO), Daniel Tarantola was involved in the creation of Médecins sans frontières and during a long career with WHO supervised the team responsible for eradicating smallpox. As a researcher, he is best known for his work in the area of HIV/AIDS and human rights. The AIDS Support Organization (TASO) was founded in 1987. It is the largest indigenous NGO providing HIV/AIDS services in Uganda and Africa, having supported over 150,000 directly since its inception. The organization has 11 service centres across Uganda, with 13 ‘mini-TASOs’ in other parts of the country.