spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

CHAPTER 4. DISCOURSE ON HIV/AIDS IN AFRICA
Current figures on the spread of HIV in Africa reveal a higher rate of infection amongst the
people of sub-Saharan Africa than other regions in the world. It is estimated that in 2008 1.4
million people died of AIDS, while 1.9 million became infected in the same year. Currently 22.4
million adults and children are living with the virus, while since the beginning of the epidemic
more than 14 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS (UNAIDS report 2009).
These statistics give some insight into the enormous and devastating consequences of the
pandemic in Africa. The radically reduced life expectancy, the impact on families and
households (with the infection of a spouse, loss of income, death of the breadwinner and the
leaving orphans), the pressure on healthcare, education, social productivity, and on national
economic growth, are all concrete effects of the AIDS pandemic in Africa.
The challenges at a micro, meso and macro level are tangible realities that determine the lives of
most people in Africa. The confrontation with diseases and suffering is omnipresent. Not only do
individuals, but communities and institutions do too become infected and affected by the spread
of HIV. In all aspects of life, these people are looking for ways to deal with their personal
experiences, and with their personal ideas on health, illness and healing. Encountering illness
and death on such a large scale has an enormous impact on people and everyone of these affected
must develop their own response in order to cope. Institutionalized and non-institutionalized,
governmental and non-governmental, African and non-African, individual and communal
responses have all been developed; academic research, medical scientific investigation,
pharmaceutical involvement, church programs, and many other projects try to address the
omnipresence of HIV/AIDS. Together all these initiatives and responses, whether individual or
communal, structural or ad hoc, tangible or intangible, constitute a distinctive health discourse in
the African context.
This chapter is an exploration of the discourse on HIV/AIDS in Africa, since its influence on
how people in Africa think about health and illness is too significant to ignore. These different
kinds of responses to the AIDS pandemic embody personal perceptions, experiences and
theoretical frameworks about HIV/AIDS as a lethal illness threatening one’s health. The
discourse itself is clearly heterogeneous, and therefore in this chapter HIV/AIDS constructs are
approached from different angles. Without pretending to provide a comprehensive overview, the
exploration of various HIV/AIDS constructs or social representations will shed light on how
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