This book explores how HIV/AIDS is understood in South African townships, where infection continues apace despite extensive educational efforts and where AIDS deaths continue despite the availability of antiretroviral treatment. The book focuses on nonscientific or alternative understandings of AIDS--the folk and lay theories that circulate within African communities. It describes how these local theories constitute a plural belief structure that underlies and supports the de facto plural health-care system operating in South Africa, a system that is readily acknowledged but rarely seriously...
This book explores how HIV/AIDS is understood in South African townships, where infection continues apace despite extensive educational efforts and wh...