Letting Them Die: How HIV/Aids Prevention Programmes Often Fail: Why HIV Prevention Programmes Fail - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1919930116 ISBN 13: 9781919930114

Synopsis

South Africa has the worst AIDS epidemic in the world. This title, based on a pioneering study of a mining community on the Rand, highlights the barriers and constraints to controlling this national crisis. It asks why AIDS prevention and awareness programmes have had so little impact and what are the lessons within Africa and across the world.

About this title

Review

Campbell's thesis is that a complexity of multi-level processes influence HIV transmission and that, unless addressed, they hamper the most well-meaning efforts to dislodge the epidemic's grip. ... The old ways of understanding and responding to this epidemic have not gained us sufficient ground against it sufficiently quickly. There is much that can be learnt and applied in this thoughtful and challenging analysis. If we are to make headway against its ravages we must take this book seriously.' - Elizabeth Reid in ARAS Australia 'It took courage to document and write about such a failure in a world enamoured of "best practices". ...Letting Them Die is a most useful, challenging, and thought-provoking book. It compels us to listen to people, think out of the box, looks for "new practices" (p. 195), and muster our drive and energies to design HIV/AIDS programmes that work faster than the epidemic.' - John F. May, The World Bank, in Population Studies Catherine Campbell's book is a superb analysis of community development initiatives and challenges surrounding HIV programmes. The material for this book is well researched and intelligently summarised. There are few books documenting the challenges of HIV programmes and 'Letting Them Die: Why HIV/AIDS Prevention Programmes Fail' provides an important and compelling contribution to this body of literature.' - Rebecca Tiessen in The European Journal of Development Research '...a forceful presentation of a theoretically well-informed and comprehensively researched critique of the participatory community development approach to HIV prevention. It will be valuable not only for those with a particular interest in HIV/AIDS management, but also for those with a more general interest in the possibilities and limitations of the "partnerships" and "participation" as community development strategies.' - Jo Beall in Journal of International Development 'This important book, which should be read by all in community-based work, describes a project that tried and failed to reduce the risk of HIV infection amongst three groups in a mining town in South Africa - female sex workers, male miners, and young people.' - Tony Klouda in Development & Change '...a painstaking and at times heart-wrenching account of how a well-resourced, promising initiative, with all the elements necessary for success, failed to produce results. As such, the study is not an indictment of community-based programming per se, but rather an example of how one method was tried and failed. ...the author takes a blunt, grave, principled and unflinching stand. By refusing to look away or overlook the Project's shortcomings, her book is a rare and positive contribution to the study of HIV/AIDS in the region.' - Glen S. Elder in African Affairs '...the best book yet written on the struggle to control HIV, from the perspective of a project that has tried extraordinarily hard to do so, but had modest success.' Alex de Waal, Times Literary Supplement 'The book is a major achievement, setting the standard for rigorous evaluation of planning and delivering HIV prevention. It should be required reading, not only for those with an interest in HIV prevention in southern Africa, but for all interested in developing or evaluating social interventions to promote health.' - Chris Bonell in Health Education Research 2005 'The majority of Campbell's book is written, however, to serve as a guidebook for anyone running or working in a health-related programme on a developing country. And some of its bleak assessments of the challenge facing South Africa are of universal interest.' - Claire Roberts Lamont in the African Review of Books.

About the Author

Catherine Campbell is a Reader at the London School of Economics, and an External Professor at the University of Natal.

Edition details

• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1919930116
• ISBN 13: 9781919930114
• Binding: Paperback