Summary
Contents
How do we understand drug use? How are drugs related to our social worlds? How should drug use be understood, approached and dealt with? Insightful and illuminating, this book successfully discusses drugs in social contexts. In an elegant manner, the authors bring together their different theoretical and practical backgrounds, offering a comprehensive and interdisciplinary introduction that opens up a wide scientific understanding moving beyond cultural myths and presuppositions. Powerful and engaging, this book discusses main questions within the field of psychoactive drugs research, such as: Why do people take drugs? How do we understand moral panics? What is the relationship between drugs and violence? How do people's social positions influence their individual involvement in drug use? This is an invaluable reference source for students on criminology, sociology and social sciences programmes, as well as students and drug service practitioners in social work, social policy and nursing.
HIV/AIDS and Other Blood-borne Viruses
HIV/AIDS and Other Blood-borne Viruses
Blood-borne viruses (BBV) refer to diseases that are spread through blood-to-blood contact. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a BBV that attacks the immune system. It is the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition that impairs the immune system and leaves people substantially more vulnerable to opportunistic infection and illness.
Within a span of three decades, HIV and AIDS have become major public health concerns. The initial spread of HIV was influenced by various social and political factors that shaped the nature of the pandemic. In 2007, an estimated 33 million people were living with HIV (UNAIDS/WHO, 2008), with the vast majority residing in the continent of Africa. In the same year, approximately ...
