Viruses and Reproductive Injustice: Zika in Brazil - Couverture souple

Löwy, Ilana

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1421447916 ISBN 13 : 9781421447919

Editeur : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024

Synopsis

Brazil's Zika outbreak revealed extreme health disparities and reproductive injustice across racial and socioeconomic lines.

Brazil's 2015 Zika outbreak led to severe illnesses for many and the birth of several thousands of children with severe brain damage. Even though mosquito-borne diseases such as the Zika virus affect people across society, these children were born almost exclusively to poor, and usually non-white, women. In Viruses and Reproductive Injustice, Ilana Löwy explores the complicated health disparities and reproductive injustice that led to these cases of congenital Zika syndrome.

Löwy examines the history of the outbreak in Brazil and connects it to broader questions concerning reproductive rights, the medical science behind understanding new pathogens, and the role of international health organizations in battling—or ignoring—public health crises. The explanation behind the strongly skewed distribution of cases among social classes was far from straightforward or obvious during the Zika outbreak. Löwy argues that the disproportionate effect of Zika on births among the poor is primarily a function of dramatic disparities in access to contraception and prenatal care, as well as Brazil's anti-abortion laws: only wealthier women have access to safe abortions. This is a book about the changing meaning of an infectious disease outbreak and a haunting demonstration that an epidemic is both a biological and a political event produced by the complicated entanglement of humans, viruses, and mosquitoes.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Ilana Löwy (PARIS, FRANCE) is emerita senior research fellow at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research. She is the author of Imperfect Pregnancies: A History of Birth Defects and Prenatal Diagnosis.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Date d'édition: 2024
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1421447916
• ISBN 13: 9781421447919
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 294
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Allemagne