Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T14:10:25.650Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Roadblocks on the Road to Treatment: Lessons from Barbados and Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2006

Jamila Headley
Affiliation:
Saint Michael's College, Vermont (E-mail: jheadley@smcvt.edu)
Patricia Siplon
Affiliation:
Saint Michael's College, Vermont (E-mail: psiplon@smcvt.edu

Extract

On a beautiful tropical day, two women living thousands of miles apart enter public clinics. One walks past the neatly parked cars in the parking lot, to the front door of the newly built, well-equipped Ladymeade Reference Unit, which stands across from the largest public medical facility on the island of Barbados. Everything about this experience is neat and well-ordered, from the facilities the woman is entering, to the pill boxes bearing brand-name labels that she receives at the in-house pharmacy, to the referral system that sent her here after she delivered a baby across the street. The second woman's experience appears a bit less ordered. The clinic she enters, which sits on the outskirts of one of Brazil's slum-ridden cities, is shabby, with peeling paint and a utilitarian concrete structure. Inside, there are no shiny, manufacturer-sponsored posters to match the pills being dispensed, because these pills do not bear familiar brand-name labels. Though the pictures may appear quite different, they bear a crucial similarity—both women are living with HIV, and both are fortunate to live in countries that have committed themselves to providing universal treatment access for their HIV-positive citizens.Patricia Siplon is Associate Professor of Political Science at Saint Michael's College in Vermont (psiplon@smcvt.edu). Jamila Headley is a student activist and member of the Student Global AIDS Campaign. She received her BA in political science from Saint Michael's College in 2006 (jheadley@smcvt.edu). Both authors would like to thank the Provost's Office at Saint Michael's College for funding and support of this research.

Type
PERSPECTIVES
Copyright
2006 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barbados National HIV/AIDS Commission. 2003. Follow up to the declaration of commitment on HIV/AIDS (UNGASS) Barbados Country Report: January–December 2002. http://www.ungasshiv.org/index.php/en/content/download/2132/22063/file/Barbados2003en.pdf.
Beckles, Hilary. 1990. A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Nation-State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Berkman, Alan, Jonathan Garcia, Miguel Muñoz-Laboy, Vera Paiva, and Parker Richard. 2005. A critical analysis of the Brazilian response to HIV/AIDS. American Journal of Public Health 95 (7): 116272.Google Scholar
Brazilian Ministry of Health. 2001. National AIDS Drug Policy. http://www.aids.gov.br/final/biblioteca/drug/drug1.htm.
Gauri, Varun, and Evan Lieberman. N.d. Institutions, social boundaries, and epidemics: Explaining government AIDS policies in Brazil and South Africa. Available online at http://www.ssc.upenn.edu/polisci/programs/comparative/LiebermanPaper.pdf.
Marquez, Patricio V.2004. Scaling up the struggle: Barbados HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Program. Development Outreach, July.
Parker, Richard. 2003. Building the foundations for the response to HIV/AIDS in Brazil. Divulgacão em Saude para Debate 27: 14383.Google Scholar
Petchesky Pollack, Rosalind. 2003. Global Prescriptions: Gendering Health and Human Rights. London: Zed Books.
Rosenberg, Tina. 2001. Look at Brazil. New York Times Magazine, January 28. http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20010128mag-aids.html.
Teixeira, Paulo. 2003. Universal access to AIDS medicines: The Brazilian experience. Divulgacão em Saude para Debate 27: 18491.Google Scholar
Teixeira, Paulo, Marco Antônio Vitória, and Jhoney Barcarolo. 2003. The Brazilian Experience in Providing Universal Access to Antiretroviral Therapy. http://www.iaen.org/files.cgi/11066_part_1_n2_Teixeira.pdf
World Bank. 2003. The Barbados HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Program. World Bank News. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:20221523∼pagePK:116743∼piPK:36693∼theSitePK:4607,00.html
World Health Organization. 2005. Access to HIV treatment continues to accelerate in developing countries, but bottlenecks persist. World Health Organization Press Release, June 29. http://www.who.int/3by5/progressreportJune2005/en/.