We're watching the largest HIV treatment programme in the world unravelling in real time. We don't need perfection, but we do need a combination of urgency, action and strategy to save it.
We're watching the largest HIV treatment programme in the world unravelling in real time. We don't need perfection, but we do need a combination of urgency, action and strategy to save it.
We are about to see a wave of new HIV infections, sickness and death, with children born infected in record numbers. We will see our public hospitals further overwhelmed, and our hard-won victories against TB reversed.
It is all preventable.
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Two decades ago, South Africa's HIV crisis was defined by denialism and delay. Then president Thabo Mbeki and the late health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang presided over a period in which scientific consensus was rejected and the roll-out of antiretroviral medicines was obstructed, and preventable deaths spiralled into the hundreds of thousands. Their names are now linked to one of the worst public health failures in modern history.
The consequences of today's inaction will also be deadly.
Sadly, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi and President Cyril Ramaphosa are charting their own tragic legacy. This time, it isn't denialism; it's ignoring the problem.
The US has abruptly suspended almost all foreign development assistance globally, including the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) research...
