HIV research
Airhihenbuwa CO. On being comfortable with being uncomfortable: centering an Africanist vision in our gateway to global health. Health Educ Behav 2006 Dec 15 [Epub ahead of print].
African identity must be central to research on African health and development. Airhihenbuwa reflects on three primary themes for advancing a different vision for understanding health issues in Africa. The first is the need to deconstruct conventional assumptions and theories that have been used to frame public health problems and solutions in Africa. The second is to insist that identity be central to how we frame issues of health and behaviour in general and in Africa in particular. The third is the importance of the notion of "social cultural infrastructure" in defining African ways of knowing to guide public health research and intervention in Africa. Finally, the author uses the metaphor of the "African gate" to illuminate these themes while drawing on examples from an HIV- and AIDS-related stigma research in South Africa and its implications for addressing the critical global public health issues of today.
Editors’ note: These are thought-provoking ideas for all of us supporting the response to AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
Falagas ME, Bliziotis IA, Kondilis B, Soteriades ES. Eighteen years of research on AIDS: contribution of and collaborations between different world regions. AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses 2006;22:1199-205.
The scientific community invests significant resources on HIV research to confront the current epidemic. Falagas and colleagues reviewed the medical literature in order to evaluate the contribution of different world regions on HIV research during the past 18 years. The authors retrieved articles, using an elaborate methodology, from three journals focusing on HIV between 1986 and 2003, indexed in the Journal Citation Reports and the Web of Science databases of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Comparisons were made by dividing the world into nine geographic regions, and by using the human development index categorization. A total of 9502 articles on HIV were retrieved from three AIDS journals over an 18-year study period. The United States and Western Europe together made up a striking 83% of the world's research production on HIV. Scientists from the developing world participated in 10.4% of the articles published during 1986-1991, 14.7% during 1992-1997, and 21.3% during 1998-2003. Researchers from countries included in the high, medium, and low human development index category produced 2240, 9, and 15 articles per billion population, respectively. About half of articles originating in Latin America and the Caribbean and half in Asia were produced in collaboration with the United States. However, 40% of articles from Africa and 58% from Eastern Europe were produced in cooperation with Western Europe. Collaboration between researchers within developing regions was negligible. The vast majority of the world's research on AIDS is produced in the developed world. Although research production was minimal in the developing world, regions included in the low and medium human development index categories showed a higher proportion of increase in research productivity than the developed countries. The authors conclude that international collaborations should significantly increase and expand beyond the traditional, cultural and political lines of international relationships.
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