World loses vocal Aids prophet

Professor Ruben Sher, the man who predicted 20 years ago that HIV/Aids would become a ‘biological holocaust” in South Africa, has died at the age of 78. Under apartheid, and at a time when the disease was seen as a problem of white homosexuals, he was the stubborn, forthright and vocal prophet warning of the looming tragedy. If the predictions of this greying, slightly stooped, male Cassandra were sadly proved correct, it was despite his best efforts to warn, to educate and to treat the disease.

Before the arrival of life-lengthening anti- retroviral drug cocktails, Sher created one of the first clinics treating and caring for people with HIV. He recognised the need to improve patients’ quality of life, even if he could not prolong it, and would hug patients to reassure them that being HIV-positive did not mean they were beyond human contact.

He was critical of the apartheid system and outspoken in his beliefs, raising the ire of many politicians and fellow medics. He described his approach to Aids as ‘apolitical and humanitarian”.

Sher recognised the importance of providing education, counselling and support for both people living with HIV/Aids and healthcare workers, including traditional healers. He called for compulsory Aids and sex education in schools and criticised the censors’ ‘paternalistic attitude” for banning safer-sex videos aimed at gay and heterosexual lovers.

Ignored or belittled at home for many years, abroad Sher was a friend of some of the world’s most famous names in HIV research. The son of a shopkeeper, he was for many years South Africa’s medico- scientific face of the response to HIV/Aids, and received numerous awards for his efforts.

Sher became alerted to HIV/Aids in 1982 after reading about the disease in the United States, where he had taken his sick son for treatment. Recognising the potential for the virus to spread through heterosexual as well as homosexual sex, Sher became vocal about the impending catastrophe — but only a few listened.

Des Martin, a former colleague of Sher’s, described him as an entertaining and courageous man. ‘He was brave to start a new clinic; he was brave to look after people with Aids; he was brave to speak up; and he was brave to uphold all his beliefs.”

He was physically brave as well: at the age of 21, Sher became a combat pilot in the Israeli army after he and three friends flew a Dakota airplane from Johannesburg to Israel to take part in that country’s defence. Two years later he returned to South Africa to train as a doctor at the University of the Witwatersrand. After qualifying in 1958, he specialised as an immunologist and was a researcher as well as a clinician. He received his PhD in 1980. A lecturer at Wits for many years, Sher was described as ‘one of the funniest lecturers I ever had and a superb teacher” by one of his former pupils.

A man who could not be idle, Sher attended to his last patients on Friday last week, the day he went into hospital for heart surgery. Clear-sighted and realistic to the end, he thanked his closest friend for his friendship. ‘Then he packed his little suitcase and went off to hospital,” said his wife. He never came home. Sher died as a result of heart failure. He leaves his wife of 42 years, Jean, four children and seven grandchildren. — Belinda Beresford

Ruben Sher, born June 16 1929, died September 10 2007