Thirty years after the identification of the first cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)--caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)--medical breakthroughs in diagnosis and treatment have changed the course of this disease. For many patients, the infection can be suppressed enough through medication to allow a normal life expectancy. Yet there are regions of the United States that continue to struggle with the devastating consequences of unchecked and untreated HIV/AIDS, and Andrew J. Skerritt reports on the situation in one Southern community in Ashamed to Die.
Skerritt interviews patients, their families and friends, and health-care providers in a small town in South Carolina whose lives have been touched by HIV/AIDS. Through detailed personal portraits, intermixed with startling statistics, Skerritt exposes the difficulties the South's rural black population has faced in dealing with the disease. Inherent poverty, social inequality and scarcity of resources are already public health issues in many communities; add a cultural hesitancy to talk openly about HIV/AIDS and the behaviors that contribute to its transmission (drug addiction, promiscuity, prostitution), and the morbidity and mortality of the disease are magnified. Skerritt poignantly reminds us that shame does not lie with the dying patients, but rather with those who fail to acknowledge the AIDS problem or offer assistance in its prevention and treatment. --Roni K. Devlin, owner, Literary Life Bookstore & More