Network


Latest external collaboration on country level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots.

Hotspot


Dive into the research topics where Nana K. Poku is active.

Publication


Featured researches published by Nana K. Poku.


International Affairs | 2002

Poverty, debt and Africa’s HIV/AIDS crisis

Nana K. Poku

As Africa enters its third decade of structural adjustment pressures, the promised advantages of economic restructuring—as hailed by the various lending bodies— have not been forthcoming. The indelible picture emanating from the continent is one of a people relegated to a position of extreme poverty as state managers and the international community either fail to, or seem unable to, pursue policies that will secure the basic needs of its citizens. To compound matters, HIV and AIDS are threatening to erode the continents already fragile development capacity. Predicated on the continents limited economic capabilities, this article charts the relationship between poverty, debt relief and the politics of effective response to HIV/AIDS in Africa. The article begins with an assessment of the societal causes and consequences of the epidemic, moving on to contextualize the case for debts cancellation. It concludes by examining the crucial relationship between debt relief and the successful implementation of effective strategies against the pandemic in Africa.


Third World Quarterly | 2001

Africa's AIDS Crisis in Context: 'How the Poor are Dying'

Nana K. Poku

The 13th International Conference on AIDS held in Durban, South Africa, highlighted the social catastrophe unfolding on the African continent. The meeting took place in the country with the largest number of people infected by HIV - the virus that causes AIDS - on the continent that is home to 70% of the worlds HIV-infected population. The cruel irony of the unfolding human tragedy is that Africa is also the least equipped region in the world to deal with the multiplicity of challenges posed by the HIV virus. Drawn from ongoing research in southern Africa, this article charts the relationship between poverty, HIV prevalence and the politics of global response.


Third World Quarterly | 2002

The Global AIDS Fund: context and opportunity

Nana K. Poku

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS offers great promise as an instrument of global action to address the devastating effects of the disease. Yet the enormity of its promise also speaks to the scope of its mission: to facilitate the financing by governments, corporations, philanthropical bodies and individuals of a massive effort to address the epidemic that has to date outpaced previous efforts at effective control. A key challenge is to devise a governance structure that makes effective action likely, satisfies donors, responds efficiently, and produces observable results. By examining recent developments, this paper seeks to outline facets of the governance challenge facing the Global AIDS Fund.


Review of International Studies | 2005

The socioeconomic context of Africa¿s vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.

Jane Freedman; Nana K. Poku

Although the proximate cause of Africa’s AIDS crisis is HIV, the underlining societal causes are much broader and familiar. Across the continent, poverty structures not only the contours of the pandemic but also the outcome once an individual is infected with HIV. Thus, until poverty is reduced there will be little progress with either reducing transmission of the virus or creating an enhanced capacity to cope with its socioeconomic consequences. It follows that sustained human development is an essential precondition for any effective response to the pandemic in Africa.


Third World Quarterly | 2011

The Millennium Development Goals and Development after 2015

Nana K. Poku; Jim Whitman

Abstract Five years from the end of the 15-year span of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) it is already plain that progress has been patchy and that the larger goals will not be met. The scale and profile of the MDGs will make them subject to eventual success or failure judgments and ‘lessons learned’ analyses, but the evidence of the past decade and current trajectories are sufficient to reveal our conceptual and operational shortcomings and the kinds of reorientation needed to ensure that the last five years of the MDGs will exhibit positive momentum rather than winding-down inertia. Such reorientations would include prioritising actors over systems; disaggregated targets over global benchmarks; qualitative aspects of complex forms of human relatedness over technical ‘solutions’; and the painstaking work of developing country enablement over quick outcome indicators, not least for the purpose of sustainability. Thinking and planning beyond 2015 must be made integral to the last five years of the MDGs, for normative as well as practical reasons.


The Open Aids Journal | 2016

HIV Prevention: The Key to Ending AIDS by 2030

Nana K. Poku

There is no viable substitute for re-energizing, funding and supporting culturally attuned, locally staffed HIV advocacy and prevention programmes, especially in resource poor settings. The evidence that such interventions are effective remains compelling; and although the cost implications are not negligible, the medium to long-term outcomes must be regarded not as complementary, but as integral, to biomedical interventions. The success of the anti-retroviral drugs upscale has enabled a noticeable improvement in AIDS related morbidity and mortality in the recent years; yet the underlying dynamics of the epidemic remains undetermined by the rate at which new infections are taking place in relation to the number of AIDS deaths. While the rate of new HIV infections is stabilising in some of the hardest hit countries, it remains far too high and the future cost of maintaining an ever-expanding pool of people reliant on daily drugs for survival is unsustainable. Countries must exercise caution in continuing to focus on treatment as a ‘quick fix’ to end AIDS as a public health concern. HIV is a socially culturally induced crisis and, as such, a variety of measures are needed simultaneously to appeal to different people, groups and circumstances.


Third World Quarterly | 2018

Political responsibility and global health

Nana K. Poku; Jesper Sundewall

Abstract Globalising dynamics have had wide-ranging and pervasive impacts on nearly every form of human relatedness, which now include the bases upon which states calculate and express their political responsibilities. As the ‘reach’ of practical and normative pressures extends and their demands intensify, the compass of state responsibility is becoming a key pressure point for facing the challenges and mediating the tensions of our globalised and still globalising world. This theme is examined from a global health perspective. The general disposition of states toward their acknowledged political responsibilities is unlikely to change, but the combination of legal, normative, political and practical dynamics impinging on them have already begun to register, as both states and the international system adjust to a politics that now have global dimensions.


Global Public Health | 2018

How should the post-2015 response to AIDS relate to the drive for universal health coverage?

Nana K. Poku

ABSTRACT The drive for universal health coverage (UHC) now has a great deal of normative impetus, and in combination with the inauguration of the sustainable development goals, has come to be regarded as a means of ensuring the financial basis for the struggle against HIV and AIDS. The argument of this paper is that such thinking is a case of ‘the right thing at the wrong time’: it seriously underestimates the scale of the work against HIV and AIDS, and the speed with which we need to undertake it, if we are to consolidate the gains we have made to date, let alone reduce it to manageable proportions. The looming ‘fiscal crunch’ makes the challenges all the more daunting; even in the best circumstances, the time required to establish UHCs capable of providing both essential health services and a very rapid scale-up of the fight against HIV and AIDS is insufficient when set against the urgency of ensuring that AIDS does not eventuate as a global health catastrophe.


Development in Practice | 2017

Sustainable development and the struggle for LGBTI social inclusion in Africa: opportunities for accelerating change

Nana K. Poku; Kene Esom; Russell Armstrong

ABSTRACT The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Agenda 2063 chart a new development pathway for Africa. ‘Leaving no one behind’, or full social inclusion, is central to this effort. What will this mean for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or intersex (LGBTI) people in Africa who are among the most socially excluded members of the population? This article explores this through a discussion framed by the concept of social inclusion and the commitments regarding it that appear in the SDGs and the Agenda 2063. Although LGBTI inclusion across Africa is not explicit in either document, there are nevertheless important opportunities for linking continental LGBTI advocacy to the sustainable development enterprise.


African Journal of AIDS Research | 2016

Fast-tracking HIV prevention: scientific advances and implementation challenges.

Kaymarlin Govender; Nana K. Poku

In 2014 the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) reaffirmed its 2011 commitment to end the scourge of AIDS by 2030 (see Table 1). Recent articulations of this commitment are outlined in the UNAIDS Fast-Track Strategy and the UNAIDS 90-90-90 Strategy (UNAIDS, 2014a). If, indeed, targets are to be met, a long overdue rethink is needed about what works in HIV prevention. Epidemics are social and relational phenomena spread and sustained by patterns of human settlement, movement, exchange and — in the case of HIV and AIDS — in large measure by risky sexual behaviours. The “human element” is in turn conditioned by environmental, cultural, political and socio-economic drivers. So as AIDS quickly developed into a pandemic, it soon became apparent that prevention initiatives would need to be tailored to the conditions of at-risk populations, in all their diversity; that general, top-down appeals to self-interest would not suffice; and that there could be no substitute for the reach, consistency and adaptability of on-the-ground initiatives. Since the start of the international response to AIDS the underlying dynamics of the epidemic have been determined by the rate at which new infections are taking place in relation to the number of AIDS deaths. The considerable success in making antiretrovirals (ARVs) affordable to those who would otherwise have died — some 15 million men and women to date — does nothing to alter this fundamental condition. Life-saving biomedical interventions enjoy rapid, measurable outcomes, while the contribution of effective prevention campaigns can only be calculated on a longer-term basis and with much less certainty that an investment of funding will deliver the calculated returns. Nevertheless, placing HIV-positive people on life-long antiretroviral therapy (ART) without a concomitant commitment to reducing new infections through prevention is a form of bailing out a leaking boat. A renewed emphasis on prevention is all the more pertinent because of the funding crunch that has already begun to beset international funding for HIV and AIDS. Against calculations from UNAIDS that we require a near doubling of resources, it appears unlikely that levels of funding will do little better than flat-line. Meanwhile, the span (and costs) of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have already deprived HIV and AIDS of its standing as a unique global emergency, and donor countries must also face looming crises of non-communicable diseases, occasioned by their ageing populations. Most recipient nations are unlikely to be able to make up funding shortfalls by a combination of innovative financing, belt-tightening and efficiencies. Against this background, it is alarming that prevention initiatives (and levels of funding) have waned in recent years. Global indicators for HIV incidence suggest that too few countries have been able to either reverse the spread of the epidemic on a sustainable basis or stop its progression, and fewer programmes on prevention have been scaled up to national level. While the rate of new HIV infections is stabilising in some of the hardest hit countries, it remains far too high, not least because the future cost of maintaining an ever-expanding pool of people reliant on daily drugs for survival is unsustainable.

Collaboration


Dive into the Nana K. Poku's collaboration.

Top Co-Authors

Avatar

Jim Whitman

University of Bradford

View shared research outputs
Top Co-Authors

Avatar

Alan Whiteside

University of KwaZulu-Natal

View shared research outputs
Top Co-Authors

Avatar
Top Co-Authors

Avatar
Top Co-Authors

Avatar
Top Co-Authors

Avatar

Neil Renwick

Nottingham Trent University

View shared research outputs
Top Co-Authors

Avatar
Top Co-Authors

Avatar

Kaymarlin Govender

University of KwaZulu-Natal

View shared research outputs
Top Co-Authors

Avatar
Top Co-Authors

Avatar

Fantu Cheru

University of Southampton

View shared research outputs
Researchain Logo
Decentralizing Knowledge