Hiv, Gender and the Politics of Medicine: Embodied Democracy in the Global South

Drawing on long-term ethnographic studies, this book centres on women who live with HIV in South Africa, Brazil and India and who have fought, through transnational activist networks, to access essential medicines through their country's public health system. The book traces the path of the individual to the national and transnational to demonstrate the political and embodied ramifications of policies governing AIDs medicine on individual lives. Founded on two decades of ethnographic research, including participant observation, participatory photography and film and journey mapping, the book shows the ways in which HIV-positive women have acted on national and global policies in their efforts to access necessary medication and treatments. By tracing this important struggle, the book reveals the lessons that were learned by the activists and policy makers who were engaged in shaping these vital policies.