The Lazarus Effect of AIDS Treatment: Lessons Learned and Lives Saved

Abstract

During the treatment decade of rolling out antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) in African clinics, new social meanings have been created, and they link local people living with HIV/AIDS to Western communities in new ways. The health of African “others” has taken a central, new, and perhaps quasi-religious role in Western societies. Working on behalf of humanitarian organizations to combat modern emergencies is the contemporary embodiment of an ideal, pure notion of “the good” that is not linked to “old religion” but mimics many of its dispositions and practices. This analysis is based on empirical data gathered during fieldwork as participants and observers in a Catholic AIDS treatment clinic and through interviews with service providers in Uganda. We use these data to think both creatively and systematically about the meanings and limitations of pastoral power and therapeutic citizenship.

Keywords:

• HIV/AIDS
• Africa
• ARV treatment
• religion
• humanitarianism
• Uganda

Notes

¹ Vanity Fair is a monthly, middle-brow entertainment magazine. It features reviews, celebrity interviews, trend stories, and usually one high-brow feature with literary ambitions (Iraq War, women's prisons, AIDS, etc.) per issue.

² This is a biblical reference to the raising of the dead Lazarus of Bethany by Jesus in the New Testament.

³ “(RED) Celebrity video with Hugh Jackman, Gwen Stefani, Bono & More.” Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKrtG724Cek

This article was first presented at the conference “Health: A New Religious Awakening in Western Societies?” at Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark, 14 September 2010. The authors thank the participants for their comments.

⁴ Lisa Ann Richey has spent 6 months in South Africa (2005) and a total of 6 months in Uganda (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010) conducting a vertically integrated multisited ethnography for a project titled The Politics of Access to the Treatment of African AIDS. Louise Mubanda Rasmussen has spent a total of 10 months in Uganda (2008, 2009, 2010) conducing a multisited ethnography in Catholic AIDS treatment centers in urban and rural Uganda for her Ph.D. dissertation titled From dying with dignity to living with rules: AIDS treatment and “holistic care” in Catholic organisations in Uganda.

⁵ http://www.pepfar.gov/

⁶ The AIDS Support Organisation is an internationally renowned NGO that was started in 1987 by people infected or affected by HIV/AIDS; see http://www.tasouganda.org/about.php.

⁷ See, for example, www.reachoutmbuya.org.

⁸ The name of this group and all its informants are pseudonyms to maintain confidentiality.

⁹ UNAIDS measures ARV treatment coverage as the number of people receiving ARV treatment in relation to the estimated number of people living with HIV/AIDS with a CD4 count below 350.

¹⁰ From 2004 to 2010, the number of people living with HIV in Uganda has increased from approximately 1 million to 1.2 million (UNAIDS 2012).

¹¹ Septrin (a brand name) is the widely used name in Uganda for the antibiotics combination called cotrimoxazole, used as prophylactic treatment to HIV positive patients to prevent opportunistic infections.

¹² These include problems such as not having enough food to maintain the balanced diet required of clients on ARV treatment and having problems paying rent and school fees.

¹³ See announcements from the Global Fund at http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/mediacenter/announcements/2011-12-01_Update_on_the_Modification_of_the_Global_Fund_Grant_Renewals_Policy_and_Process/