Last week, a friend lent me The Invisible Cure by Helen Epstein. I hesitated, thinking that "books like these" tend to fade out of relevance quickly. Don't judge a book by it's title! In 261 pages, Epstein taught me more about HIV/AIDS, and the myriad hows and whys of it's devastating path through Africa than all the reading I've done thus far.
One of the things that stood out most was her description of how in the 1990s, Uganda was able to drastically reduce infection rates not because of a technical fix (e.g distributing condoms) or a narrowly defined "moral" one (e.g. abstinence only programs) but through the powerful effects of "social mobilization". That is, intimate, straight-up, personal discussions led by small groups of women and congregations, the compassionate volunteers who tended to the sick at home, the women's rights activists who helped people see that HIV was something that was affecting everyone, not just prostitutes and truck drivers.
As for all of us who live and work in Africa, are thinking about it, or perhaps simply donate to organizations working here, this quote alone is worth some serious consideration:
“Everyone seems to know what Africa needs, but sometimes I think our minds are not really on it. Most of us see only Africa’s contours, and we use them to map out problems of our own. Africa is a career move, an adventure, an experiment. It fades into an idea.”
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