Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
aidslatest news & developments
After being diagnosed with HIV at 33, retired Constitutional Court justice Edwin Cameron never thought he’d make it to 40. He’s now 73 and part of a generation that is growing older thanks to antiretrovirals and, he says, the activism that made sure it was available in South Africa. Photo: Stefan Els
AIDS
Video

HIV made him expect to die at 40. At 73, Edwin Cameron asks: Who’s planning for our ageing survivors?

At 33, the retired Constitutional Court justice thought he had, maybe, seven years left. His story traces the arc from certain death because of Aids to a chronic, manageable…

  • Tanya Pampalone
  • Mia Malan
14 min read
To end Aids by 2043, the South African government says it could get a group of local pharmaceutical companies to make generic shots of lenacapavir from 2027 onwards. There is, however, a hitch. None of the companies that will be involved have a licence to make the jab. (Julia Koblitz/ Unsplash)
AARON MOTSOALEDI

SA wants to make its own six-monthly HIV prevention jabs by 2027. But there’s a hitch

None of the companies that will be involved have a licence from the inventor of Lenacapavir, Gilead Sciences, to make the jab

  • Mia Malan
9 min read
Four toilets, built in 2013 by the organisation Candice Andisiwe Sehoma founded, are still flushing, although floods of raw sewage flow daily through the streets of Alexandra. (Sean Christie)
AIDS

Building toilets, fighting TB: Candice Andisiwe Sehoma’s life of activism

From discontinued insulin pens to overpriced TB drugs, meet the young South African holding drug makers to account on behalf of patients

  • Sean Christie
10 min read
One in 10 clinics in South Africa will start to hand out a twice-a-year anti-HIV jab as early as February. The country’s medicines regulator, Sahpra, says it’s on track to announce its registration decision within the next few days, by the end of October. So who should get LEN first? (Anna-Maria van Niekerk)
AARON MOTSOALEDI

The six-monthly anti-HIV jab could be in 360 clinics by February. Who should get the first doses?

The country’s medicines regulator Sahpra says it’s on track to announce its registration decision by the end of October

  • Mia Malan
10 min read
According to a survey, 85% of managers reported that their clinics faced staffing shortages, though only one in five blamed these on the US President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief cuts
AIDS

Clinics short-staffed after Pepfar funding cuts

According to a survey, 85% of managers reported that their clinics faced staffing shortages, though only one in five blamed these on the US President’s Emergency Plan For Aids…

  • Liezl Human
2 min read
Long shot?: In April next year, South Africa plans to start rolling out an anti-HIV jab, taken only twice a year, that could end Aids in the country within 14 to 18 years. But is our public health system equipped to keep track of millions, who are on the shot? (Unsplash)
AIDS

The six-monthly anti-HIV jab is coming. But can SA keep track of millions of users?

The shot, called Lenacapavir, has a 100% success rate in preventing young women from getting HIV through sex

  • Ida Jooste
  • Mia Malan
10 min read
AIDS

Dangerous fantasy: US ambassador Dybul said SA was ready to transition off Pepfar. It wasn’t

Weeks later, thousands of health workers are unemployed, HIV services are collapsing and the government hasn’t filled the gap. This isn’t transition, it’s unraveling in real time

  • Tian Johnson
4 min read
The pathological hatred Trump inspires on the left and the quasi-religious devotion he commands on the right reflect tensions within American democratic culture. File Photo
AIDS

It’s the ‘Donald disease’ that’s making us sick

With the 12 specialised key population clinics in South Africa funded by the US government, and now shuttered, getting treatment at government clinics has been difficult, if not…

  • Tanya Pampalone
  • Mia Malan
11 min read
African health systems have long been undermined by debt and political neglect.
ABUJA DECLARATION

The cost of neglect: Debt’s toll on African health systems

The US withdrawal will reveal the underlying truth: African health systems have long been undermined by debt and political neglect.

  • Tian Johnson
6 min read
Local pharmaceutical production would help insulation against external shocks, which hurts vulnerable people the most.
AFRICAN PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTION

US aid cuts: Africa must make its own medicine

Donald Trump’s funding freeze underlines that South Africa needs to prioritise the development of its pharmaceutical manufacturing sector

  • Michael Mynhardt
5 min read
US President Donald Trump’s suspension of foreign funding will adversely affect LGBTIQ+ people in Africa.
AFRICA QUEER NETWORK

In wake of US cuts, SA must step up to protect LGBTIQ+ rights in Africa

The suspension and withdrawal of US support for people’s rights in Africa is a setback

  • Gibson Ncube
6 min read
Of the 30 countries the World Health Organisation has identified as having a high burden of TB and HIV co-infections, 22 are in sub-Saharan Africa. Photo: MUJAHID SAFODIEN/AFP/Getty Images)
AFRICA

Solutions to TB and HIV benefit all of us, North and South

Diseases don’t respect national borders … governments all over the world need to work together to rein them in

  • Monicah Otieno
5 min read
The Global Fund for HIV, TB and Malaria says it will fund the roll-out of the twice-yearly anti-HIV jab, lenacapavir, for poorer countries, including South Africa, with or without the help of the US government’s Aids fund, Pepfar
AIDS

The Global Fund will roll out the twice-yearly anti-HIV jab — with or without Pepfar

In December, the Global Fund and the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief committed to funding the roll-out of lenacapavir in countries they support

  • Ida Jooste
9 min read
On Saturday, the US state department issued details of who qualifies for a limited waiver during the Trump administration’s 90-day pause of foreign aid. The waiver, however, doesn’t allow for US government-funded anti-HIV pills, unless they’re given to pregnant women. (White House)
AFRICA

Too little, too late: What a Pepfar waiver can’t do for HIV

The US has said who qualifies for a waiver during the Trump administration’s pause in foreign aid but it doesn’t allow for anti-HIV pills, unless for pregnant women

  • Mia Malan
11 min read
The Botswana Network on Ethics, Law and HIV/Aids says the crisis is not an isolated supply-chain issue but a ‘systemic failure’ that demands urgent government intervention
AIDS

What researchers learnt from five baby boys in KwaZulu-Natal about an HIV cure

A groundbreaking study published in Nature Medicine gives insight into what an HIV cure could look like during infancy

  • Tian Johnson
10 min read
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the SANDF deployment in his 12 February State of the Nation Address.
AIDS

Build soldiers capacity to combat the HIV epidemic

On the same day we commemorated World Aids Day 2024, I was at the vigil of a former classmate and fallen soldier who died of HIV related illnesses in Kenya. Amid the sadness of…

  • Robert Kigongo
4 min read
Through tackling stigma, community leadership and improving education, as well as strengthened global and domestic investment, HIV transmission can be reduced in Madagascar. (Photo by Sally Hayden/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
AIDS

Madagascar faces an HIV crisis. We can bring it back from the brink

Through tackling stigma, community leadership and improving education, as well as strengthened global and domestic investment, HIV transmission can be reduced

  • Winnie Byanyima
5 min read
Dire situation: A busy street in Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo. The country has seen a sharp rise in Aids cases and deaths. ©UNAIDS 2024.
ISSA SANOGO

Low-income countries such as Madagascar lack funds to fight Aids

The pandemic is still claiming lives in the Indian Ocean country due to lack of HIV prevention and treatment services

  • Robert Shivambu
5 min read
File photo by Marco Longari/AFP
AIDS

Only by protecting women’s rights can we protect women’s health

The health of young women and girls is shaped by gender-based inequalities and violence

  • Anne Githuku-Shongwe
2 min read
UNITED NATIONS JOINT PROGRAMME ON HIV

Protect everyone’s rights to protect everyone’s health against Aids

Zero discrimination is essential to if we are to change the fact that 7.8 million South Africans live with HIV, but 5.8 million people are on ARVs, highlighting a treatment gap

  • Eva Kiwango
6 min read