Marina Coleman’s HIV & AIDS: Notes from the Launch

by Emily on April 23rd, 2009

Marina Coleman’s near-instant bestseller, HIV & AIDS – a comprehensive guide to the virus and disease featuring the illustrations of newspaper satirist Sifiso Yalo – was launched earlier this month in Johannesburg, and journalist Andrea Nagel was there to record Coleman’s galvanizing speech.

“There are really four questions I would encourage you to ponder,” said Coleman. “Question one: how does HIV affect your body? I’m not looking for generic answers folks, I’m talking CD4 counts and T-cells, what they mean and what they actually do.”

Find out the other three questions that Coleman feels are central to any discussion of HIV and AIDS in South Africa today:

MARINA Coleman and Siphiso Yalo’s book about HIV and Aids begins with the sentence: “There is a lot of information about HIV and Aids around.”
Unfortunately, much of this information is inaccessible or far too technical for the school child or domestic worker.
Coleman’s new book, illustrated with cartoons by Yalo, addresses this gap in our HIV- Aids education by delivering colourful illustrations and a lot of easily understandable information that is accessible to everyone from 10 to 60.
In her speech at the launch of the book, Coleman said: “There are really four questions I would encourage you to ponder: Question one: how does HIV affect your body? I’m not looking for generic answers folks, I’m talking CD4 counts and T-cells, what they mean and what they actually do .