To End a Plague, Emily Bass
To End a Plague, Emily Bass
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To End a Plague
America's Fight to Defeat AIDS in Africa

Author: Emily Bass

Narrator: Catherine Ho

Unabridged: 16 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 07/06/2021


Synopsis

“Randy Shilts and Laurie Garrett told the story of the HIV/AIDS epidemic through the late 1980s and the early 1990s, respectively. Now journalist-historian-activist Emily Bass tells the story of US engagement in HIV/AIDS control in sub-Saharan Africa. There is far to go on the path, but Bass tells us how far we’ve come.” —Sten H. Vermund, professor and dean, Yale School of Public Health
 
With his 2003 announcement of a program known as PEPFAR, George W. Bush launched an astonishingly successful American war against a global pandemic. PEPFAR played a key role in slashing HIV cases and AIDS deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, leading to the brink of epidemic control. Resilient in the face of flatlined funding and political headwinds, PEPFAR is America’s singular example of how to fight long-term plague—and win.
 
To End a Plague is not merely the definitive history of this extraordinary program; it traces the lives of the activists who first impelled President Bush to take action, and later sought to prevent AIDS deaths at the whims of American politics. Moving from raucous street protests to the marbled halls of Washington and the clinics and homes where Ugandan people living with HIV fight to survive, it reveals an America that was once capable of real and meaningful change—and illuminates imperatives for future pandemic wars. Exhaustively researched and vividly written, this is the true story of an American moonshot.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Marydale on December 27, 2023

A comprehensive global history of the AIDS epidemic and the creation of the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). People in the HIV world will recognize many of the characters appearing throughout this book, though their contributions, political influence, and personal sacrifice often......more

Goodreads review by Scott on November 19, 2021

In the 1990s, scientists made significant advances to limit the impact of HIV upon human lives… in the West. However, HIV continued to flourish in sub-Saharan Africa, and it remained for the new millennium to limit its reach there. Bass’s book tells the story of the American effort in this quest tha......more

Goodreads review by Paul on July 14, 2021

To End A Plague is a monumental journalistic effort! Emily Bass remarkably weaves togerther her personal journey, her long term tracking of people and AIDS programs in Uganda, and she shares incisive reporting on the advocacy and policy dynamics in Washington DC and in Africa. This combination of in......more

Goodreads review by Grace on July 10, 2022

Written as a memoir, this book spends an incredibly small amount of time even talking about PEPFAR, UNAIDS, or any aspect of the US response to AIDS. Instead, the author spends times documenting activist work, as if there is an invisible line differentiating Activists from PEPFAR staffers, and their......more

Goodreads review by Matthew on October 21, 2021

A detailed and fascinating history of PEPFAR and all that it did (and didn't do) to help save countless lives across the world. The author's interactions with people in the story work well sometimes (e.g. her relationships with people living with HIV) and feel bizarre at other times (her failed roma......more


Quotes

“Readers with a background in the subject will consider this essential.”—Publishers Weekly

“With 25 years of experience as an AIDS activist, journalist Bass makes a vivid book debut with a detailed recounting of a prevention program that effectively stemmed AIDS in Africa…A timely history of successful government intervention.”—Kirkus Reviews