… but did not have the time to…
I would like to have blogged about this thought provoking excerpt from Russell Banks’ The Darling on the difference between empathy and sympathy.
“What was ethically and even practically wrong with having empathy towards the other? For a long time, I answered, Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s good politics. I see a blind man about to cross a street and think, He can’t see the whizzing traffic, he needs me to see it for him, to take his arm and escort him over to …

A response to IRIN/PlusNews list of six potholes in the road to significantly increasing HIV treatment coverage in Africa.
1. Cost:
The Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has estimated that US$ 28 billion to US$ 50 billion would be needed globally every year from 2010 to 2015 in order to progressively reach universal access targets for HIV/AIDS by 2015. One-third of this will contribute towards the cost of the drugs.
The figure may sound “staggering” but it needs to be put in perspective with a few other figures such as:

The cost of …

Can we, and should we, pay people to change their behaviour to stop the spread of the HIV virus which causes AIDS? When it comes to HIV prevention, there is nowadays no limit to the “we need more options” motto and that’s what two World Bank studies conducted in Malawi and Tanzania showed.
In an experiment conducted in Malawi, girls aged 13 to 22 and their parents received as much as $15 each month if the girls attended school regularly, HIV Prevalence was 60% lower among girls receiving cash payments.Though this …

Back in January, I wrote a comment following Rick Rowden’s public launch at SOAS of his book “The Deadly Ideas of Neoliberalism: How the IMF has Undermined Public Health and the Fight Against AIDS”.  Today I open this blog to Rick who emailled me with the following response. I am still reading through Rick’s book and hope to come back to this issue very soon.
Dear peripheries:
Thanks you for covering the launch of my book at SOAS in London in January. I appreciate your attempt to review my book before reading …

Scientists from the Montjoie Institute of Research in Calgary have announced today that after years of secretive research they have finally identified a cure for HIV. “This is a giant step for science and mankind” announced Dr John Vago, leader of the HIV/AIDS research group at the Institute. “It was so simple that for a long time we could not believe it”.
Indeed, it took 25 years to a team of 50 researchers to come with a simple answer, the cure for HIV is no more than… A glass of water! …