Published in:
Open Access
01-07-2017 | Introduction
At the Heart of the Problem: Health in Johannesburg’s Inner-City
Authors:
Helen Rees, Sinead Delany-Moretlwe, Fiona Scorgie, Stanley Luchters, Matthew F. Chersich
Published in:
BMC Public Health
|
Special Issue 3/2017
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Excerpt
Urban life in the twenty-first century is marked by numerous stresses and shocks, resulting from rapid urbanisation, frequent migration and crowding, massive unemployment, climate change, physical disasters, and disease outbreaks, among other challenges. This reality – according to the ‘100 Resilient Cities’ initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation – is why the concept of resilience is critical to a sustainable future: cities must learn to “survive and thrive, regardless of the challenge” [
1]. In cities in the global South that face a heavy HIV burden, this health crisis is often inseparable from a wider set of interlinked social challenges, ranging from acute economic inequality to chronic political mismanagement and failed states. What ‘resilience’ means in such contexts is hard to imagine, but at the very least, as UNAIDS’ Michel Sidibé puts it, “people must be at the centre of the response” [
2]. …
