ABSTRACT
The HIV epidemic is one of the most severe health crises of our time, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) cites HIV as being responsible for the greatest reversal in human development (UNDP 2005). In areas most affected by HIV, life expectancy has been reduced greatly, economic growth has waned, and household poverty has deepened. Although declines in new infections are being witnessed in some countries, an estimated 2.6 million new infections occurred globally in 2009 (UNAIDS 2011). Currently an estimated 33.3 million people globally are living with HIV, and each year almost two million people die from AIDS (UNAIDS 2011). Increasingly, it is the poorest and/or most marginalised segments of societies that are affected by HIV/AIDS (Parker 2002).
