The First Neoliberal Pandemic: Why Inequality and Structure Matter to the Spread of HIV/AIDS

• In Event: 106 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session I
  In Refereed Roundtable: A. Table 08. Inequality and Health

Abstract

The virus that causes HIV/AIDS was first identified in the 1980s. Concurrently, neoliberal market logic came to dominate economic and political policy emanating from the United States and Great Britain. Upon first glance, these two occurrences appear to have little to do with each other. However, neoliberal market reform as well as structural adjustment programs (SAPs) enforced globally under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank created an environment within which an otherwise preventable epidemic grew to become a global pandemic killing thirty-six million people as of October, 2013. SAPs implemented in the global south forced governments to cut spending on public health as well as other social programs just as HIV/AIDS initially arose as a public health concern. Further, enforcement of the TRIPS accords of the World Trade Organization prevented the importation of generic lifesaving antiretroviral medications at a time when such medications would have been most effective in preventing the spread of the disease. Further, the social component of neoliberal ideology holds that each individual is responsible for maximizing their success in various kinds of markets. Because HIV/AIDS is associated with stigmatized behaviors such as promiscuity or intravenous drug usage, infected individuals are positioned as failed neoliberal subjects. Prevention programs tend to focus on individual behaviors rather than the structural dimensions of the pandemic. The global response to HIV/AIDS under a neoliberal hegemonic regime sheds light on the multiple ways the human life is valuated cross nationally and cross culturally.

Author

• Helen Sharon Jolly, State University of New York-Stony Brook