HIV and AIDS

This chapter applies core general principles of institutional and evolutionary political economy to provide an interdisciplinary analysis of the HIV-AIDS epidemic that has befallen all parts of the world, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, and also more recently numerous other areas. We start with the principle of historical specificity and the social history of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), including the rise and fall of their incidence trajectory throughout the world, and the areas where it is currently rising. Then we deal with the natural history of HIV and the natural history of the condition in individuals, involving the principle of contradiction. This is followed by the contradiction involving various AIDS researchers, plus an investigation of cofactors involved in HIV and how it differs from AIDS, using the principle of circular and cumulative (CCC) to view the complex causal processes, and the principle of heterogeneous groups and agents to scrutinize the variants of HIV and human groups with differential rates of infection. Through the principle of uneven development the reasons why areas of Sub-Saharan Africa have been consistently so majorly impacted relative to other regions is analyzed. This is followed by a section on the principles of innovation and policy (‘governance innovation’), where a five-pronged strategy is enunciated for keeping HIV-AIDS in check, and hopefully working towards successful vaccines and even better drugs into the future.