A Who Public Health Approach to Ending AIDS in the Global South: Lessons for Ncd Control and Universal Health Coverage

In highlighting how a WHO Public Health Approach (PHA) has been successfully used in developing countries to provide HIV/AIDS patients with antiretroviral therapy (ART), this important book provides a template for how the PHA can be implemented to treat other chronic but non-communicable diseases (NCDs) as well. With over 28 million people globally now receiving treatment for HIV/AIDS, it’s clear there are lessons to be learnt from the provision of ART which have great relevance for NCD care and towards achieving Universal Health Coverage in the global south.

The first section of the book provides a detailed overview of the strategy that enabled such a successful program to be take place, the challenges faced and its evolution over time. The book then moves on to assert that by approaching other chronic NCDs in a similar way, focussing on populations with integrated long-term and short-term person-centred care, there is a pathway towards universal health care and Universal Health Coverage across the developing world.

Discussing many of the most pressing diseases and public health issues effecting these regions, this book provides global health scholars and practitioners with a detailed analysis of the challenges faced in tackling these diseases, but also an integrated person-centred health-care approach by which these challenges may be met.

Charles F. Gilks holds the inaugural Queensland Professorial Chair in Blood-borne Viruses and STIs at the University of Queensland. He is a global health specialist and clinical academic. A UK graduate, he started working on HIV/AIDS in East Africa in 1988, based in Nairobi at the Kenya Medical Research Institute. He became the Professor of Tropical Medicine at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 1994 before moving to WHO in 2001 to head up HIV treatment and prevention scale-up and to drive ＂3by5＂ roll out. He was appointed UNAIDS Country Coordinator in India in 2009 and moved to Australia in 2013 to become Dean and Head of the School of Public Health at UQ.

Yibeltal Assefa Alemu is an associate professor in Global Health Systems at the School of Public Health, the University of Queensland. He has played key roles in developing national and global guidelines and contributed to health systems strengthening and universal health coverage in Ethiopia and other resource-limited settings. He has held influential positions in Ethiopia, including Deputy Director General of the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, Executive Director of the International Institute for Primary Health Care, Director of Medical Services at the Federal Ministry of Health, Director of Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation as well as Head of Health Programs at the Federal HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office.