Approximately 36.7 million people worldwide live with HIV, 19.0 million of them in Southern and Eastern Africa (UNAIDS 2015). HIV prevalence in South Africa’s province of KwaZulu-Natal is among the highest in the world; some 40 percent of women attending antenatal clinics in the province test positive for the virus (Department of Health 2010). In this region, young adults are developing HIV-related illnesses and many are dying prematurely, as treatments, food, water, and health care remain difficult to access. As families lose their “middle generation” members, older women (the “grandmothers”) commonly take on caring for those who are sick, vulnerable, and orphaned (Casale 2011; Chazan 2015).

Chazen, M. (2020). Aging and disability in the time of AIDS: Reflections from community-based research with older women caregivers in South Africa. In K. Aubrecht, C. Kelly, & C. Rice (Eds.), The aging-disability nexus (pp. 218–234). UBC Press.