HIV/AIDS and Rural Development

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is by no means a single epidemic. Its epidemiology, impact and the potential for generating an effective response to it varies greatly between nations and between urban and rural areas in a single country. In a sense, it is many discrete epidemics. Better understanding the unique aspects of the disease in each setting has the potential to create important opportunities for mitigating both transmission and impact.

RADAR has been attempting to explore this complexity through highlighting a number of relationships that have shaped the nature of the epidemic in the developing country context, and in the rural setting.

An overview of the HIV epidemic in Africa with an emphasis on its links to the process of rural development and the rural response to the epidemic can be accessed in the reference below. More detailed discussions of the epidemiology of HIV transmission and its relationship to education and socio-economic status are also outlined in the articles below.

HIV/AIDS and Rural Development - relationships, realities and responses. Rural Development, Interfund, 2002. (4kb)

Hargreaves JR, Morison L, Chege, J, et al. Socio-economic status and HIV infection in an urban population in Kenya for the Study Group on Heterogeneity of HIV epidemics in African Cities. Tropical Medicine and International Health, 2002. (79kb)

Hargreaves, JR, Glynn J. Educational attainment and HIV-1 infection in developing countries: a systematic review. Tropical Medicine and International Health 7: 489-498, 2002. (84kb)