Canada's International Response to HIV/AIDS PDF Download

Author: Stephanie Ann Nixon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780494159118
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
This study examines the Government of Canada's international response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the political, economic and social forces that have shaped it. The study draws on the emerging framework of critical public health ethics to inform analysis of the ideologies and ethical principles underlying Canada's responses. Canada's international actions were taken to be intimately connected to Canadian foreign policy, which, like public health ethics, was understood as being shaped by the pervasive forces of neoliberal economic globalization. Canada's international response to HIV/AIDS was found to be moderate, spotty and nonstrategic. Participants also identified a tension underlying the response. This tension was cast as a dilemma with public good, human rights and "doing the right thing" on one side, and enhancing prosperity, promoting trade and letting markets reign on the other. Equally revealing were the conspicuous silences in the data that became apparent through the lens of critical public health ethics. Although almost every participant identified Canada as having a moral obligation to respond to the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, there was a glaring absence of moral reasoning and ethical vocabulary to underpin this claim. Furthermore, few participants made the link between the role of poverty in exacerbating HIV/AIDS and Canada's connection to poverty creation through its economic and trade policies at the bilateral and multilateral levels. The methods were empirical and non-empirical. Non-empirical aspects of the study included the development of a conceptual framework, an overview of Canadian foreign policy and a document review of Canada's international response to HIV/AIDS. The empirical component of this study consisted of 23 interviews with experts from government, civil society, the United Nations system and private industry regarding the forces that have shaped Canada's international responses and underlying ethical reasoning. The analysis resulted in policy recommendations for Canada's international response to HIV/AIDS in the future, as well as directions for the evolution of the nascent conceptual framework of critical public health ethics. Finally, a range of research directions emerged regarding the application of a critical public health ethics lens to broader questions of global health and development.