Books by Helen Epstein

A New York Times Notable Book of 2007 The Invisible Cure is an account of Africa's AIDS epidemic from the inside--a revelatory dispatch from the intersection of village life, government intervention, and international aid. Helen Epstein left her job in the US in 1993 to move to Uganda, where she began work on a test vaccine for HIV. Once there, she met patients, doctors, politicians, and aid workers, and began exploring the problem of AIDS in Africa through the lenses of medicine, politics, economics, and sociology. Amid the catastrophic failure to reverse the epidemic, she discovered a village-based solution that could prove more effective than any network of government intervention and international aid, an intuitive response that calls into question many of the fundamental assumptions about the AIDS in Africa. Written with conviction, knowledge, and insight, The Invisible Cure will change how we think about the worst health crisis of the past century--and indeed about every issue of global public health.

In 1993, Helen Epstein, a scientist working with a biotechnology company searching for an AIDS vaccine, moved to Uganda, where she witnessed first-hand the suffering caused by the HIV virus. The Invisible Cure, dramatic, illuminating and beautifully written, recounts the struggle of international health experts, governments and ordinary Africans to understand the devastating spread of HIV in Africa, and traces how their responses to the crisis have changed in light of new medical developments and political realities. The AIDS epidemic in Africa is uniquely severe. It is partly a consequence of the political, social, and economic upheavals of the past century, which have left millions of Africans adrift in an increasingly globalized world. Their poverty and social dislocation have generated an earthquake in gender relations that has had devastating consequences for the spread of the HIV virus. Epstein argues that there are ways to address this crisis that may be simpler than many people imagine. A deeply affecting story of scientific breakthroughs and false starts, and of the human costs of policymakers missteps and inaction, The Invisible Cure will change the way we think about AIDS, a disease without precedent.