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Response paper 1

Laetitia Rispel and Jennie Popay in their paper raised a major issue prevailing in South Africa that is HIV and gender inequality in the perspective of this disease. More specifically, they pointed out that women are three times more likely to be affected by HIV than men.

According to the authors, HIV is a disease of poverty that is an economic disadvantage but in broader aspect poverty is just one of the dimension of an exclusionary process that is responsible for the widespread of HIV in South Africa. It is important to note that HIV widespread is both a cause and a consequence of disadvantage. Due to the stigma associated with this disease, once a person is infected, he or she will be excluded from all the necessities of life like jobs, support, and services. Furthermore, another issue that people face is limited to no access to the diagnosis and treatment of this disease.

In this paper, a social exclusion framework is used to determine the gender equalities and causes of HIV in South Africa (Rispel and Popay).

Methodology

The authors used a social exclusion framework to examine the causes of HIV and its association with gender inequalities. They focused on a relational understanding of social exclusion rather than the static approach. Relation perspective consists of socioeconomic, cultural and political dimensions. These four dimensions constitute to make a hierarchy of social stratification. These social stratifications and the lack of accessibility to power is the leading cause of increased health-damaging circumstances. This is the reason for the health inequalities that people face in many developing countries. Social exclusion leads to lower self-esteem leading to high-risk sexual behavior. The author further explained that women particularly are more affected by the social exclusion as in South Africa, older men seek sexual favors from young girls while providing them food or school fees etc. Due to this reason, they are more to get HIV. Although different policies are made, which helps in providing awareness of safe sex yet still due to the stereotypical culture and poverty, HIV is increasing rapidly (Rispel and Popay).

Response paper 2

Article:

In this article, the authors discussed the inability of the South African government to address the widespread causes of HIV in the country. Although the government has transitioned to a new era where there is less discrimination yet, there still exists segregation between the South African white minorities and nonwhite majorities which is the main hurdle that South African government face to restructure the healthcare system. Additionally, another barrier that hinders equality in the health care system is privatization. Due to these factors, mostly black South Africans are prone to HIV. Back in 1948, black Africans are forced to live in a designated area that was the first step toward their social exclusion (Li). These designated areas were given no health care facilities initially but as the people living there started working as a cook, driver or cleaner for the White Africans they were given some facilities to avoid White people getting sick by the Black Africans. In one of the designated areas Bantustan, the hospital staff was of different ethnicity who were supposed to treat people of their ethnicity, thus causing more problems for the people residing there. Moreover, due to the privatization of many hospitals, it was very difficult for black Africans to access high-quality health care services. After the post-apartheid time government tried to introduce different strategies to overcome this discrimination and provide equal opportunities to all the people but failed because the political system inherited by the new government is full of flaws and discrimination. It is the responsibility of the government to focus more on the health care issues specifically for black Africans and making the accessibility of quality health care easy for them (Li).

Works Cited

Li, Veronica. "Political systems and health inequity: connecting apartheid policies to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa." The Journal of Global Health (2011).

Rispel, Laetitia, and Jennie Popay. "Confronting social exclusion, HIV and gender inequalities in South Africa." Agenda 23.81 (2009): 90-100.