Wisdom of Whores
Assignment 1
In the 80’ Aids/HIV was a upcoming decease. Since the emergence, there has been a major clash
between science and politics. Many countries considered Aids to be a killer of young adults, however
many people chose to ignore it. Even politicians appeared to be frightened of Aids. Pisani and her
colleagues' mission was to raise awareness of the disease, encourage governments to take action to
combat their expanding HIV epidemics, and acquire funding to enable them do so. Eventually,
Understanding how HIV/AIDS has been framed to put it higher on the policy agenda can help to
critically assess our efforts against this epidemic.
To combat aids, UNAIDS was established in 1996 as a completely new "joint program". In the mid-
1990s, rich countries were no longer worried about AIDS in their own countries,. Many governments
did not want to know about AIDS, let alone the sex and drugs that transmitted it. To put Aids on the
global policy agenda steps had to be made. The first step was to increase funding for HIV prevention.
That means convincing affluent countries to be concerned about AIDS in developing countries. After
which, UNAIDS could focus on persuading the governments of developing countries to use the funds
wisely. In order to raise funds for other nations, story’s about Aids had to be made bigger, intriguing,
and dramatized. They needed to show that aids was expanding to other regions. Major countries
with large populations and thriving economies include China, Russia, India, and Indonesia. As a result,
it has been decided to attract attention to these countries in the hope that it will wake up the rest of
the globe. This was accomplished by examining percentages of change rather than absolute
numbers. The 1997 estimates were compared with the those published by the WHO three years
earlier. This worked, Instead of a prevalence of 0.004 percent of the sexually active Russian
population, Russia had an 11,500% spike in HIV infections within four years. UNAIDS also needed to
figure out how to turn the facts into something that governments would be interest in. Something
that politicians would care about was also reported. Aids prevention is fairly inexpensive. However,
this does not imply that it is a wise investment for a head of state. These prime ministers are more
concerned about re-election. Therefore, UNAIDS implemented information about innocent wives
infected with Aids, implying that the general population was also a target at this stage. For this, a
study of around 400 women attending STD clinics in Pune India, was used, where a startling 13.6%
tested positive for HIV. However, this group of woman did not represent the general population. This
was carried out since UNAIDS was very confident that until they demonstrated that HIV posed a
threat to the "general population," neither funders nor governments would be interested. As a result
of these reports funds came in.
UNAIDS had spent a lot of time attempting to fit the HIV epidemic into an organizational chart of
boxes and arrows. People either belong to the sex worker box, the customer box, or the wife box, for
example. However, Pisani discovered in Indonesia that most people do not fit into boxes. A major
issue is that the WHO wants reports on how to lower the prevalence of Aids to be tailored to each
country. Unfortunately, each person and country is unique and cannot be categorized. In conclusion,
controlling an infectious disease such as Aids is extremely tough since the effected population varies
per country. More than only preventing fatalities by fighting Aids, money and self-interest play a
significant part in preventing Aids.