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Aids

latest news & developments
Donor funding is shrinking just as science has delivered powerful new medication that could dramatically cut new HIV infections. Photo: Felipe Varanda/IAS
HIV

Aids is no longer exceptional. What happens now?

The International Aids Conference in Rio de Janeiro highlighted a stark reality: the era of Aids exceptionalism is ending amid unprecedented funding cuts. As science delivers…

  • Mia Malan
9 min read
HIV PREVENTION

#Aids2026: Bhekisisa analysed SA’s first LEN roll-out data. Here's what it found

South Africa accounts for over half of all lenacapavir (LEN) users in Africa, with health department data revealing 31,297 of the continent's roughly 60,000 users are in the…

  • Mia Malan
  • Linda Pretorius
  • Karen Harkema
11 min read
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