ABSTRACT
If metrics and indicators have provided a powerful way of conceptualizing the end of AIDS, then maps have served as another modality in which to visualize both the history of the HIV epidemic and its epidemiological distribution across the globe. With the UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets and the subsequent goal of achieving viral suppression amongst people living with HIV, visualizing the progress toward the end of AIDS through maps has once again become a particularly influential way of ‘knowing the epidemic’. The proliferation of various types of maps that all report on the current HIV epidemic, has become an increasingly popular way of tracking the progress toward the end of AIDS. This chapter interrogates the ways in which HIV science has increasingly taken space and place as its focal point in the name of ending AIDS. More specifically, the chapter argues that space has become important as part of the emerging discourse of ending AIDS. Subsequently, space and place has emerged as both a problem area of the HIV epidemic as well as a potential space wherein surveillance and interventions can be implemented. The chapter interrogates the role and function of so-called ‘community viral load maps’ and tries to insert the use of these into broader issues of ethics, surveillance and community health care, while it also charts out how these types of maps intersect with, on the one hand, a focus on individuals and, on the other hand, a focus on the object of the ‘community’ in an effort to ‘end AIDS’.
