Wealth and HIV Status Paradox
For higher classes with greater amount of wealth, it is naturally assumed that they will have less of a chance of acquiring infectious diseases because they have the money to stop the spread of such diseases. Meanwhile, lower classes with less wealth will not be able to afford treatments to stop the spread of diseases and might even not be knowledgeable about dangerous diseases that they might be catching, so they are at a higher likelihood of catching and spreading various diseases.
However, this is not the case in Africa with HIV. The upper class, instead, are the ones that have the highest percentage of HIV infection, specifically 15-29 year olds. This creates a type of status paradox, having a "disease of affluence", associated with differing class levels.
Read more about this topic: Status Paradox
Famous quotes containing the words wealth, status and/or paradox:
“Science, which cuts its way through the muddy pond of daily life without mingling with it, casts its wealth to right and left, but the puny boatmen do not know how to fish for it.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“... it is the desert’s grimness, its stillness and isolation, that bring us back to love. Here we discover the paradox of the contemplative life, that the desert of solitude can be the school where we learn to love others.”
—Kathleen Norris (b. 1947)