Decency in a globalizing world: Care for people living with HIV

Even a cursory look at the intellectual and social history of medicine reveals that the treatment of patients has undergone paradigm shifts.¹ These paradigms, in turn, have facilitated the expansion and contraction of medical care, expressing at the same time the social context in which they occurred. To consider the potential impact of decent care as a competing paradigm for medical practices and policies aimed at people living with HIV (PLHIV), it is first important to sketch the social context that would enable its realization. The next section outlines four pivotal factors of social existence in the age of globalization, and the last section describes the merits and possible demerits of the decent care paradigm.