South Africa: HIV Treatment Programme Doing Well but Long Way to Go

There are over four million people with HIV on antiretroviral treatment (ART) in South Africa. Over 90% are being treated in the government hospitals and clinics. It may be the largest chronic care programme in a public health system in the world. *

UNAIDS, the United Nations body that deals with the HIV epidemic, estimates that by 2016 conventional blood tests cannot detect HIV in over three million people on ART. This is brilliant. It means that besides the fact that many have returned to good health, they cannot transmit HIV to other people. (But if they stop taking treatment, the virus bounces back.) UNAIDS also estimates that new HIV infections halved between 2010 and 2016.

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