Directions: Use the Following Reading to Answer Questions 2-6

Name ______Period ______Date ______

AIDS in Africa

1. Based on what you have learned previously, what is AIDS? What does the acronym stand for? How is it transmitted?

Directions: Use the following reading to answer questions 2-6:

HIV/AIDS is a major public health concern and cause of death in many parts of Africa. Although the continent is home to about 15.2 percent of the world's population,Sub-Saharan Africa alone accounted for an estimated 69 percent of all people living with HIV[2] and 70 percent of all AIDS deaths in 2011.

Countries in North Africa and the Horn of Africa have significantly lower prevalence rates, as their populations typically engage in fewer high-risk cultural patterns that have been implicated in the virus's spread. Southern Africa is the worst affected region on the continent. As of 2011, HIV has infected at least 10 percent of the population in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

In response, a number of initiatives have been launched in various parts of the continent to educate the public on HIV/AIDS. Among these are combination prevention programs, considered to be the most effective initiative, the “Abstinence, Be Faithful, Use a Condom” campaign, and the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation's outreach programs.

According to a 2013 special report issued by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, the number of HIV positive people in Africa receiving anti-retroviral treatment in 2012 was over seven times the number receiving treatment in 2005, "with nearly 1 million added in the last year alone".

The number of AIDS-related deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2011 was 33 percent less than the number in 2005. The number of new HIV infections in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2011 was 25 percent less than the number in 2001.

Source:

2. What percent of the World’s population living with HIV lives in sub-Saharan Africa?

3. What parts of Africa have significantly lowers percentages of HIV/AIDS infected people? Why?

4. What initiative is considered the most effective?

5. What has improved about the treatment of HIV positive people between 2005 and 2012?

6. If the number of AIDS related deaths in 2011 was 1,200,000. How many AIDS related deaths occurred in 2005?

Directions: Use the following chart to answer questions 7-10:

Regional comparisons of HIV in 2011

7. Which global region has the lowest percentage of adult HIV in the world?

8. If the percentage of people with HIV is SIGNIFICANTLY higher in the Caribbean than in the Middle East and North Africa, why does North Africa have more people living with HIV?

9. What percent of the world’s new HIV infections occurs in Sub-Saharan Africa? (Show work)

10. Which is higher: the number of people that die from AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, or the number of AIDS related deaths in rest of the world combined?

Directions: Use the following chart to answer questions 11-13:

11. Based on what you have learned previously, why was the life expectancy of Afirca slowly increasing from 1960 until 1990?

12. Based on what you have learned so far, why do you think the life- expectancy dropped significantly after 1990?

13. What conclusion can you draw from the conclusion about the future?

Directions: Use the following article to answer questions 14-20:

Good News on AIDS in Africa: Deaths are down, and the heroes of the story aren’t who you think.

By Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb

Posted Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 8:30 AM

The latest news on AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, the epidemic’s epicenter, is good. New HIV infections have declined by 25 percent since 2001, AIDS-related deaths have decreased by 32 percent over the past 6 years, and there are expanded options for testing and treatment. After decades of doom-and-gloom news about AIDS in Africa, optimism is finally in the air.

What’s behind this positive turn? The standard narrative attributes these recent improvements to Western engagement. The heroes are the best-known acronyms in the world of AIDS (PEPFAR, UNAIDS, WHO), the Global Fund, and a host of NGOs. Together, these organizations have waged total war against AIDS in Africa—or what looks like total war if you compare it to efforts devoted to other diseases. They have spent tens of billions of dollars. They have mobilized legions of scientists, medical professionals, development workers, educators, TV programmers, marketing specialists, and volunteers. And they have shunned, silenced, and demonized those who oppose their good work. The good news about AIDS in Africa—so this standard narrative goes—is the result of their efforts. It’s proof that even on that dark and desperate continent, awash with ancient superstitions, hypersexuality, dangerous traditional practices, and poor leadership, AIDS cannot withstand a sustained pummeling by well-intentioned and well-financed outsiders.

This narrative contains some important elements of truth: Pharmacological treatments in particular are transforming HIV from a death sentence into a manageable, chronic condition, at least for those with access to antiretrovirals. But most of the measured improvements in AIDS in Africa are actually the result of cumulative, widespread behavior change that has led to a reduction in new HIV infections. In other words, the standard narrative is wrong.

The narrative is wrong because it ignores local African responses to AIDS and characterizes religion and religious leaders as part of the problem. We have systematically studied the role of religious leaders in sub-Saharan Africa for about a decade. As a single class of people, local religious leaders sit at the very top of our list of who should receive credit for the behavior changes that have curbed the spread of HIV in Africa.

This statement may surprise or even irritate people imagining fire-and-brimstone preachers who condemn the use of condoms, push conservative messages about sex and morality, and interpret AIDS as God’s wrath. That’s not what African religious leaders have been doing—quite the contrary. Yet their story remains untold.

Approximately 90 percent of Africans participate regularly in some religious congregation, and religious leaders have been preaching about sexual morality, in particular about abstinence and fidelity. But Africa’s religious leaders began doing this before PEPFAR and Western public health authorities told them to—long before the attention of the development world turned to AIDS in Africa. What prompted their efforts? Certainly not the fact that they were, or are, getting paid to do this by foreign NGOs. Ninety percent of congregation leaders in Malawi, where we began working on AIDS in 2004, have never seen a penny from any international NGO or their programs. Rather, they started preaching and teaching and facilitating conversations about AIDS when they became overwhelmed with caregiving and burial responsibilities, and when their members—especially the women—began demanding that they do so.

Local religious messages about abstinence and faithfulness are, at their root, moral messages, but not exclusively so. For nearly two decades, religious leaders of various stripes in Malawi—a religiously diverse country with high HIV prevalence—have been offering practical messages about how to resist the temptation of beautiful women, how to prevent jealousies in polygynous households, how to discern whether a boyfriend or girlfriend will be a faithful spouse in the long run, and why withholding sex within marriage might be risky for both partners. These messages have mattered. In congregations where AIDS and sexual mortality are discussed regularly, unmarried people are more likely to report being abstinent and married individuals faithful to their spouses.

At first, we worried that reporting bias (people wanting to appear good and consistent to interviewers asking invasive questions about religion, sexual behavior, etc.) could be driving this pattern. But when tested the responses against both more subjective and more objective criteria, the story checked out: Members of these congregations are less worried about AIDS (a good indicator that they aren’t exposing themselves to much risk), and they’re less likely to test positive for HIV. Far from pushing fire-and-brimstone doctrine, religious messages about abstinence and faithfulness have been pragmatic and effective. They have reduced the spread of HIV in countless African communities that have been unreached by resources from the Global Fund and its counterparts.

Source:

14. What does the author mean by, “standard narrative”?

15. Which part of the “standard narrative” about AIDS in Africa is correct?

16. Which part of the standard narrative about AIDS in Africa is wrong?

17. Who is responsible for the cultural changes in African society?

18. Why are members of religious congregations less worried about AIDS?

19. What is the author’s purpose in writing this article? What evidence from the article supports your answer?

20. What would the author say in response to the cartoon shown here? Explain your answer.

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