ABSTRACT
HIV provides a particularly acute example of the necessity of taking a contextual approach to disease containment and eradication. As Brandt has stated: ‘AIDS makes explicit, as few diseases could, the complex interaction of social, cultural and biological forces’ and ‘demonstrates how economics and politics cannot be separated from disease’.27 Yet HIV/AIDS originally prompted a biomedical response to containment. The disease was viewed as sited within the individual and, in most cases, the responsibility of the individual. Two parallel initiatives were mounted. One was to provide an effective biomedical treatment for the disease through the development of a vaccine and chemical therapies. The other was to adjust the behaviour of those identified as likely to spread the disease. The persistent emphasis on a model of individual responsibility not only produced a cost effective strategy placing the burden on individuals rather than the State, it also allowed for a moralistic and victim-blaming explanation for a disastrous epidemic for which science was not equipped to respond effectively.28
