"The global AIDS epidemic has caused over 25 million deaths since 1981, and there is no end in sight. It is a multidimensional, phased, long-wave crisis with impacts that will be felt for decades to come. Attempts to defeat the epidemic are conventionally grounded in the three core pillars of AIDS policy: prevention, treatment and care, and mitigation. But there is also an urgent need for a deeper understanding of the integral role that food and nutrition can and should play, and a corresponding urgency to use that understanding to improve responses at all levels.The 18 essays in AIDS, Poverty, and Hunger: Challenges and Responses contribute to such an understanding by examining the impacts of HIV and AIDS on labor markets and wages, household income and consumption dynamics, and the agricultural sector as a whole; by studying the ways in which households respond to prime-age illness, death, and food insecurity; and by exploring the implications of local responses for the roles that national and international actors must play in addressing the AIDS-hunger nexus.This book creates an opportunity for development professionals to build the conceptual links lacking in current multisectoral frameworks, assess impacts and costs, propose indicators and monitoring systems, and design appropriate food- and nutrition-related interventions and policies."

Using the experiences of Malawi, one of the poorest countries on the African continent, to illustrate both the challenges that poverty creates, and the opportunities for change that exist. Poverty, AIDS and Hunger outlines an easily-replicable model, at modest cost, that could lift people quickly out of poverty, with sustainable benefits.

This publication carefully describes the HIV/AIDS pandemic and how it is understood in some African contexts, which hampers prevention initiatives. It also delineates the complex nature of the poverty and HIV/AIDS interplay. To address the situation, a family systems practical ecclesiological theology and approach to HIV/AIDS ministry, and a pastoral counselling approach that derives from and is sensitive to the African context, are proposed.

The unfolding tragedy of the AIDS epidemic is an instance where a disease with local origins has created consequences worldwide. Todd Sandler (2001a) Health concerns are ?rmly embedded in the developing world. Conditions of poverty like inadequate health infrastructures and sanitation, limited access to treatment of diseases etc. have increased the susceptibility to diseases. However, there is an increasing awareness that health problems of the poor cross national borders and, hence, affect the well-being of people globally. Of all the health crises originating from the developing world the HIV/AIDS epidemic does not only seem to be the largest humanitarian concern but also possesses major economic, de- graphical and social consequences. AIDS could cause even bigger consequences in the future if the spread of HIV is not stopped. The international community has recognised this necessity by determining the 1 ?ght against AIDS as one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs ).

Hunger and Poverty in South Africa: The Hidden Faces of Food Insecurity explores food insecurity as an issue of socioeconomic, political, cultural and environmental inequity and inequality. Based on extensive original research in Free State Province, South Africa, the book explores how people living in poverty make meaning of their food circumstances within the socio-cultural, political and economic contexts of post-apartheid South Africa, how they view the government’s food security policies and programs and their perceived agency to affect change. The personal narratives contained in the book show that food insecurity is shaped by many issues, among which are structural poverty, racism, attempts or non-attempts at reconciliation during and after apartheid, public health issues such as HIV/AIDS, and environmental circumstances. At a time when most discourse around food insecurity focuses on how to provide more food to people facing hunger, this book's multidimensional approach is a valuable contribution to the contemporary dialogue on poverty, food security/insecurity, sustainability and democratic agency both within South Africa and around the world. This book will be of interest to researchers in the areas of food security, multidimensional poverty, democratic agency and sustainable development, both in South Africa and internationally.

This book brings together results of studies on progresses and challenges in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Lesotho, Kenya, Botswana, Madagascar, Tanzania, Ghana, Uganda and Nigeria. The authors focus on selected goals as cases; and the book presents resulting lessons that can inform the post-2015 development agenda. The studies are against the background that in September 2000, world leaders from 189 countries, including 147 Heads of State, gathered at the United Nations General Assembly to consider the challenges of the new millennium. They adopted the Millennium Declaration, which set out a vision for inclusive and sustainable globalization: UN 2000 (A/RES/55/2). The leaders pledged to work towards ensuring that conditions of extreme poverty are eradicated wherever they existed. To realise this declaration, the UN established eight MDGs to be achieved by 2015. The goals were broken down into 18 concrete targets and 48 indicators to track progresses in implementation. For the years lost 2000, countries in sub-Saharan Africa have been striving to achieve the goals. So far, some have achieved some of the goals, and the results toward the rest of the goals are also by and large positive, though off-target.

The disproportional loss of individuals to HIV/AIDS in their most productive years raises concerns over the welfare of surviving members of affected families and communities. One consequence of the rapid increase in adult mortality is the rise in the proportion of children who are orphaned. Sub-Saharan Africa, accounts for about 90 percent of these. Mainly due to the staggering toll of HIV/AIDS, research effort has focused on treatment and prevention. Children have received attention primarily in relation to 'mother to child transmission' and paediatric AIDS. These issues are important and compelling but fail to capture the whole story - the unprecedented surge in the number of children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. In this book we reflect on the plight of children classified as vulnerable, review interventions implemented to improve their welfare and grapple with the concept of vulnerability as it relates to human rights and the African child.

Don: American Embassy 2 copies.