- Authors
- Kelley, Laura M., and Nicholas Eberstadt
- Title
- Behind the Veil of a Public Health Crisis: HIV/AIDS in the Muslim World
- In
- NBR Special Report
- Imprint
- NBR - The National Bureau of Asian Research, Seattle, June 2005, 18 pp
- Url
- http://www.nbr.org/publications/specialreport/pdf/SR9.pdf
- Abstract
"This report examines the ever-growing HIV/AIDS crisis in the Muslim world, a heretofore largely unexplored problem that poses potentially serious dangers at the national, regional, and international levels. Main Arguments: Despite the fact that the Muslim world is home to many of the behaviors such as premarital sex, adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, and intravenous drug use which have helped spread the HIV virus in other countries and regions around the world, many governments in the Muslim world have been slow to respond to the rapidly spreading disease. Two characteristics of the Muslim world in particular are resulting in both a denial of the problem and a lack of pro-active organized efforts for infection control: 1) the fusion of faith and statecraft in many Islamic countries and 2) weak or absent democratic practices. Government response has varied: some countries like Iiran and Bangladesh have been relatively proactive in admitting to and beginning work on the problem, while others have been much more passive."