Public Radio Show Features Interview With Journalist About New Book on HIV/AIDS in Africa
NPR's "All Things Considered" on Friday included a discussion with Stephanie Nolen, a reporter for Toronto's Globe and Mail, about her book, "28: Stories of AIDS in Africa." The book features profiles of 28 people affected by HIV/AIDS, including doctors, researchers and people living with the disease. Nolen is the only Western journalist assigned to exclusively cover HIV/AIDS in Africa, according to "All Things Considered." Nolen said the 28 profiles in the book are meant represent the approximately 28 million people living with HIV in Africa, although she added that it is unknown exactly how many people are HIV-positive on the continent. In the interview, Nolen discusses some of the people profiled in the book and what she has learned working as a journalist in Africa. Nolen said that "one of the great lessons out of Africa is that treatment is a great example of something that everybody said couldn't be done," adding, "When I started reporting on this story fulltime four years ago, there were fewer than 100,000 people on treatment in all of Africa. When I left Africa two weeks ago, there were 1.5 million people on treatment. That's a 13-fold increase in four years." However, she said, "That's the good news. The bad new is that's still only a quarter of the people who are sick and have to need it today" (Block, "All Things Considered," NPR, 5/4). Audio of the segment and an excerpt of Nolen's book are available online.
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