"Shattered Dreams?" authors to present on oral history of South African AIDS epidemic
New Haven, CT — November 10, 2006
The Center for International Nursing Scholarship and Education, in conjunction with the Connecticut AIDS Education and Training Center (CAETC), at Yale School of Nursing, will sponsor a presentation and panel discussion on the topic of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. The talk will take place on Thursday, November 30 at 4:30 pm in room N-107 of the Anlyan Center, 300 Cedar Street, New Haven.
The presenters will be Ronald Bayer, PhD, and Gerald Oppenheimer, PhD, MPH, authors of the forthcoming book "Shattered Dreams?: An Oral History of the South African AIDS Epidemic." Dr. Bayer is a Professor and Co-Director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Oppenheimer is an Associate Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences and a Professor at Brooklyn College & the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Drs. Oppenheimer and Bayer will discuss how nurses and doctors on the AIDS epidemic's front lines in South Africa have confronted the rationing of antiretroviral therapy and the limits imposed by what they describe as that government's halting rollout of drugs. Their book is based on extensive interviews with over 90 nurses and doctors from medical centers, offices and clinics throughout South Africa, a country which has struggled for more than a decade to contend with the impact of the AIDS epidemic in which more than one million South African men, women and children have died.
According to the authors, "AIDS has indelibly marked the era since Apartheid's end in 1994, exacting an enormous toll on South Africa's Black community. The epidemic has had a devastating effect on the country, exacerbated by material scarcity, by the consequences of the global power of the international pharmaceutical industry, and by the unexpected resistance of President Thabo Mbeki to the distribution of antiretroviral drugs in the public health sector on which so many with AIDS depend."
Yale University has been actively engaged in the clinical response to the South African AIDS epidemic since 2002 through the Sizongoba project at Church of Scotland Hospital (COSH), Tugela Ferry, Kwa Zulu Natal and collaborations with the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine in Durban. Gerald Friedland, MD, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale and principal investigator of the Sizongoba project along with Terri Clark, PhD, Lecturer at YSN who leads clinical midwifery experiences at COSH, will participate in a panel discussion following the presentation by Drs. Oppenheimer and Bayer. The panel discussion will be moderated by Cynthia Connolly, PhD, RN, PNP, a clinician and historian at YSN.
