Publishers Weekly
05/03/2021
Bass, a journalist and AIDS activist, debuts with a granular yet wide-ranging history of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), “the largest disease-specific foreign aid effort in the history of and the world.” She notes that President George W. Bush announced the program in the same 2003 State of the Union speech in which he outlined justifications for the invasion of Iraq; details the activism that forced drug companies to significantly reduce the price of HIV/AIDS medication, making large-scale treatment programs in low-income countries possible; and explains the origins of a “conscience clause” exempting faith-based groups that receive PEPFAR funds from providing “any services or commodities,” including condoms, that run counter to their beliefs. Drawing on multiple visits she made to Uganda between 2005 and 2019, Bass profiles patients, nurses, and doctors, and documents the logistical and cultural challenges to halting the AIDS epidemic in Africa. She also documents Deborah Birx’s efforts to revitalize PEPFAR with a data-driven approach after funding for the program hit an “all-time low” in 2013. Bass’s personal reflections occasionally distract from the larger story, and the level of detail may be overwhelming for generalists. Still, readers with a background in the subject will consider this essential. (July)
From the Publisher
Readers with a background in the subject will consider this essential.”—Publishers Weekly
In "To End a Plague", Emily Bass chronicles in detail how this [American AIDS] plan came to be…[A] new very, very helpful history. —Rachel Maddow
“With 25 years of experience as an AIDS activist, journalist Bass makes a vivid book debut with a detailed recounting of a prevention program that effectively stemmed AIDS in Africa…A timely history of successful government intervention.”—Kirkus Reviews
"Massive in scope and detail, Bass's crucial if at times dense tome could not be more timely.”—Booklist
“Bass has written a memory map of activism; a love song to a generation that insisted that African lives mattered. Told with compassion and grit, this is a searing story of a generation of women warriors."—Sisonke Msimang, author of Always Another Country
“Emily Bass reveals a vast and intricate web of cause and effect that spans the globe. A must-read for citizens of countries at the receiving end of donor aid.”—Doreen Baingana, author of Tropical Fish
With the sustained rhetorical power of a seasoned journalist and the nuance of a social theorist, Emily Bass drops us into America’s decades-long war on ‘AIDS in Africa.’ Essential reading for everyone who hopes that the scattershot production of vaccine will meaningfully end the current plague.”—Cindy Patton, author of Sex and Germs
“Emily Bass brings passion, originality, honesty, grit, and fierce independence to her assessment of the wildly ambitious—and inarguably successful—PEPFAR. Bass threw herself, whole heart, at this project, recounting PEPFAR’s story in greater detail than ever before..”—Jon Cohen, senior correspondent at Science
“Emily Bass’s granular account tracks what happened after the American media klieg light shifted away from AIDS, without sacrificing poetry to mountains of data.”—Avram Finkelstein, founding member of the Silence=Death collective
“To End A Plague is a triumph, the sort of masterful, commanding work that comes around only once in a great while. Wonderful and wildly important—a landmark work that will endure.”—Martin Duberman, distinguished professor emeritus of history, CUNY
“The book must be on every US President’s table at the Oval Office to remind them of their commitment to continue foreign aid for good, be it for AIDS, COVID-19, or tuberculosis.”—Lancet
“Fascinating…nicely balances accounts of the debate over [PEPFAR] and the difficulties in running it with the reflections of the Africans [Bass] met on the frontlines of the battle against [AIDS].”—Foreign Affairs
“The resonance of that advice speaks to the astonishing scope of Bass's reporting and the honesty of her writing, but particularly her scrupulousness in rooting her conclusions in the experiences of HIV/AIDS activists and the people who built and benefited from PEFPAR.”—Andrew Green, Lancet
Kirkus Reviews
2021-04-22
A chronicle of one of America’s bold health initiatives.
With 25 years of experience as an AIDS activist, journalist Bass makes a vivid book debut with a detailed recounting of a prevention program that effectively stemmed AIDS in Africa. Drawing on medical reports, scientific papers, and interviews with activists, AIDS sufferers and their families, and health care providers and administrators (Deborah Birx, among them), the author examines the impact of a plan put forth by George W. Bush in 2003: the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Astonishingly to Bass, the scientifically sound, rigorously researched plan—informed by experts including physicians Anthony Fauci and Mark Dybul—was met with skepticism both within Washington and among AIDS activists, who treated it “as a false promise and a political ploy.” As Bass watched the fate of the plan play out, she saw that “the structure of the program designed to wage war on the virus had engendered a war for resources” among a plethora of agencies whose acronyms sometimes overwhelm the narrative. The rivalries, she notes, continued “as long as the program did, defining and undermining this singular, purpose-built effort to control a modern plague.” Although in the U.S., “it was a workaround for the enduring ambivalence about foreign aid that made efforts by turns competitive, ineffective, and fragmented,” in Uganda—where Bass had been a Fulbright scholar in 2004-2005 and returned for many extended visits—PEPFAR became “a solution to the problem of keeping people with HIV alive when their own government did not care to try.” The plan had effectively “married research with implementation, relied on local partners, moved fast,” and responded to Ugandans’ urgent needs. PEPFAR, Bass asserts, proved to be “an unprecedented achievement in promoting public health instead of public death” and an important lesson “in how the US government can organize and implement a long-term plague war.”
A timely history of successful government intervention.
