Dr. Paul Mkandawire. Photo courtesy ku.edu
The University of Kansas' Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar Series is sponsoring a public lecture in Salina Tuesday.
Dr. Paul Mkandawire is scheduled to present "International Framing of HIV/AIDS and Ebola: The Place of Africa in the Global Health Landscape" at 5 p.m. Tuesday in the west lobby 101 of the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Salina, 138 North Santa Fe Avenue.
Even when driven by the need to save lives, alleviate suffering, or promote human rights, the international response to Ebola and HIV and AIDS — two epidemics now synonymous with Africa — remains deeply intertwined with the legacy of Western medicine in colonial Africa. At its core, the global response to Ebola and HIV and AIDS in Africa is a double moment; it reproduces vestigial colonial images of the continent as the cauldron of enigmatic, virulent plagues that terrorize the world and threaten human existence on the one hand, while heralding the West as scientific and modern enough to cast away Africa’s demons, on the other.
Framed through the lens of compassion, security, and social justice, the formulation and implementation of the international response to Ebola and HIV and AIDS however generates new forces, intensities, experiences and relations, rendering affected communities to extraordinary bio-political rationalities and practices that bleed into the larger social and political life.
Mkandawire is the co-director of the Human Rights and Social Justice Program and assistant professor of Health Sciences at Carleton University. He holds cross-appointments in the Department of Geography, Institute of African Studies, and Institute of Health: Science, Technology and Policy. His research is broadly located at the intersection of global and public health and human rights.