Shattered dreams traces the south african aids epidemic from the early 1980s to 2006 examining its evolution from a disease that primarily affected a relatively small number of homosexual white men to a pandemic that has impinged on the lives of almost six million people primarily black heterosexual men and women gerald oppenheimer and ronald bayer movingly and incisively tell the story . This book is an oral history of how committed doctors and nurses in south africa struggled to ride the tiger of the worlds most catastrophic aids epidemic based on more than 250 hours of interviews with almost 90 physicians and nurses black indian and white gay and heterosexual it seeks to capture the understandings of these health care providers as they confronted indifference . Shattered dreams is an oral history of how physicians and nurses in south africa struggled to ride the tiger of the worlds most catastrophic aids epidemic based on interviews across south . Download citation shattered dreams an oral history of the south african aids epidemic review shattered dreams traces the south african aids epidemic from the early 1980s to 2006 examining . Based on extended interviews with almost 90 doctors and nurses shattered dreams is an oral history of how physicians and nurses in so