HIV in South Africa - Corinne Squire Of approximately 39.5 million HIV positive people in the world, 24.7 million live in sub-Saharan Africa, and 5.5 million South Africans are HIV positive. South Africa, despite its relatively powerful economy and infrastructure has been dramatically affected by the HIV pandemic. Individual stories such as the stoning to death of a young HIV positive woman in South Africa, the speech of 12-year-old Nkosi Johnson at the Durban World AIDS Conference, and high profile civil disobedience from activists has kept HIV/AIDS in South Africa topical, although issues around its political, medical and social constructions remain unresolved. HIV in South Africa is the first book to analyse detailed personal, and often very moving, accounts from the South African epidemic, and to link individual experiences to this epidemic's wider social and political context. Drawing on interviews with 37 South Africans affected by HIV, the book attempts to answer the following questions in particular: - How are people in South Africa finding ways to live with, speak about and resist HIV? - What resources - from, for instance, religion, politics and medicine - are people drawing on to confront the virus, and how are they changing those resources in the process? - What is the significance of gender, 'race' and class in HIV's South African context? - How is South Africa's HIV epidemic affected by the broader African and international politics of HIV and development, by activism, and by the country's apartheid and post- apartheid history? Using a narrative approach to analyse and understand people's accounts of the HIV epidemic in South Africa, this groundbreaking book also sheds light on epidemics elsewhere in the developing world, especially where there are growing rates of HIV infection.

It is essential reading for academics and students of health and social care, as well as healthcare professionals and policy makers. Corinne Squire is Co-director of the Centre for Narrative Research and Reader in Social Sciences at the University of East London.