Salama SHIELD Foundation (SSF) had its beginning after careful reflection on the impact of our medical anthropological research. It was established as a non-government organization (NGO) out of an epiphany of sorts — we believed that as researchers, we were morally culpable to translate what we were learning into programs of relevance to the needs of persons HIV infected and affected in Sub-Saharan Africa. People were saying to us that they were “dying and getting finished!” There was “hopelessness and despair”, and in the context of this existential agony, we were confronted with the challenge of how, in the face of this suffering, ought we to ethically act in response to the knowledge of their risk reality.
