AIDS and Society Research Unit

ASRU director, Prof Nicoli Nattrass, this week presented preliminary research on denialist beliefs among young South Africans at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her analysis is based on the Cape Area Panel Study which is a major survey conducted by the Centre for Social Science Research in partnership with Michigan State University. The results show a relationship between trust in former health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and denialist beliefs among respondents. Prof Nattrass has previously published on former President Mbeki's AIDS denialism in her book Mortal Combat and has published estimates of the number of deaths caused by the failure to provide antiretroviral treatment.

The Harvard Gazette reports:

Nicoli Nattrass, director of the AIDS and Society Research Unit and economics professor at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, presented preliminary results from a large-scale study of teenagers and young adults there. The results, which are still being analyzed, show that denialist beliefs are held disproportionately by black African men and are far more likely to be held by those supportive of Mbeki’s health minister, who has been replaced by the current administration.

Recent research showed how damaging denialist beliefs can be, concluding that Mbeki’s failure to roll out HIV drugs between 2000 and 2005 resulted in 330,000 unnecessary deaths and the infection of 3,500 infants with HIV.

Photo by Justin Ide, Harvard Staff Photographer.

Nicoli Nattrass and Jeremy Seekings are part of an international research collaboration on state-business relations for the project on Institutions for Pro-Poor Growth (IPPG). The IPPG project explores the proposition that political and social institutions have a direct bearing on economic institutions and thereby on economic growth and distribution. Nattrass and Seekings are conducting a South African case study of how state-business relations are shaped by the historical growth path and by labour-market institutions inherited from the past, but which nevertheless are strongly influenced by policy changes (notably black economic empowerment). They argue that South Africa's growth path will only become 'pro-poor' when institutional changes are made to facilitate a more labour-demanding growth path. This, however, would require compromises from organised labour. These ideas have been aired in business forums as part of the ongoing research process.

The Aids and Society Research Unit is one of more than one hundred organisations to endorse a statement calling on the G8 and other donor countries to honour funding commitments on combating AIDS and improving global health. ASRU also supports the earlier Declaration of Solidarity for a Unified Movement for the Right to Health.

Advocates for Health Millennium Development Goals Unite to Demand World Leaders Honor Funding Commitments

Activists at the IAS2009 conferenceFound: Hundreds of Billions of Dollars to Save the Wealthiest Corporations. Lost: Billions of Dollars of G8 Commitments to Save Millions of Human Lives

Cape Town (21 July 2009) -- In an unprecedented and historic show of unity, advocates for all the health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have charged the leaders of G-8 countries with reneging on their commitments to health by chronically underfunding programs for AIDS, TB, maternal and child health, sexual and reproductive health, and health systems strengthening across the globe.

The coalition of advocates demands that world leaders make the health of men, women, and children around the world as important a priority as the health of banks, Wall Street investment firms, and auto companies and calls on donor governments to partner with civil society to strengthen accountability from recipient countries.

Activists at the IAS2009 conference“We are already seeing people die and families forced further into poverty by healthcare costs as a direct result of this global economic crisis,” said Dr. Lola Dare, Executive Secretary of the African Council for Sustainable Health Development (ACOSHED). “The fickle policy decisions of world leaders and national government are further compounding these problems. The global health community is speaking with one voice on this urgent need. We can no longer permit the world to be distracted by false choices — between one disease and another, between a mother’s life and that of her children, between treating sick people now, in their home communities, and building sustainable health systems for the future to deliver basic health care that can save lives.” "Investments now in HIV and health broadly are fundamental prerequisites for global development,” said Julio Montaner, President of the International AIDS Society.

Elizabeth Mills (ASRU), Dr Hayley MacGregor (IDS, Sussex University) and Nondumiso Hwlele (Bamabanani Women's Group) worked together to update a series of Bodymaps, which now form part of the Assembling Bodies exhibited at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Cambridge University). Elizabeth Mills and Hayley MacGregor will publish findings from this collaboration in 2009 through a joint IDS/ASRU publication.

Assembling Bodies is a major interdisciplinary exhibition open from March 2009 to November 2010. The exhibition explores some of the different ways that bodies are imagined, understood and transformed in the arts, social and bio-medical sciences.