GC Times Talk

A remarkable partnership between the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Moi University School of Medicine in Kenya has built one of the most comprehensive and successful programs in the world to control HIV/AIDS. Calling upon the resources of the Americans, the ingenuity of the Kenyans, and their shared determination to care for patients who had been given up for dead, the program has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and described as a miracle by the U.S. ambassador to Kenya. Doctors from Kenya and the United States--employing methods once considered unfeasible, such as successfully administered antiretroviral regimes--have created a model program for saving lives and empowering the sick and impoverished. Against formidable odds, these partners demonstrate how medicine and caring can overturn preconceived notions about Africa and help wipe out the world's most devastating pandemic.

This book promotes the use of strategic communication to fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Focusing on strategic communication for positive and measurable behaviour change, the authors elaborate on a wide range of issues including: the importance of advocacy and community mobilization; comprehensive approaches to prevention and the use of communication in reducing stigma; communication programmes for a wide range of specific groups including intravenous drug users and refugees; the role of communication in support of clinical and social services; the care and support of vulnerable children; and selected communication approaches such as entertainment-education, telephone hotlines and digital communication. Case studies are employed to illustrate the concepts and show how strategic communication has been used in different developing countries for training and in designing communication programmes.

From HIV to H1N1, pandemics pose one of the greatest threats to global health in the twenty-first century. Defined as epidemics of infectious disease across large geographic areas, pandemics can disseminate globally with incredible speed as humans and goods move faster than ever before. Whilevaccines, drugs, quarantine, and education can reduce the severity of many outbreaks, factors such as global warming, population density, and antibiotic resistance have complicated our ability to fight disease. Respiratory infections like influenza and SARS spread quickly as a consequence of modern,mass air travel, while unsafe health practices promote the spread of viruses like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C.In Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know, Nobel Prize-winning immunologist Peter C. Doherty addresses the history of pandemics and explores the ones that persist today. He considers what promotes global spread, the types of pathogens most present today and the level of threat they pose, and how tocombat outbreaks and mitigate their effects.Concise and informative, Pandemics will serve as the best compact consideration of this topic, written by a major authority in the field.