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Mail & Guardian
hivlatest news & developments
One in every five girls across sub-Saharan Africa has experienced rape or sexual assault before turning 18 . Photo: File
ADOLESCENT PREGNANCY

Supporting adolescent girls advances us all this International Women’s Day

One in every five girls across sub-Saharan Africa has experienced rape or sexual assault before turning 18

  • Etleva Kadilli
5 min read
Superbugs are a big public health issue. So is climate change. Put the two together and the problem becomes even bigger. (Dylan Bush)
ACINETOBACTER BAUMANNII
Video

Superbugs plus climate change equals double trouble. Here’s why

As the Earth becomes hotter, we’re seeing more floods and droughts. Flooding can make superbugs spread faster and further. And heat helps germs adapt faster

  • Ida Jooste
11 min read
UNAids executive director Winnie Byanyima. Image: UNAids on X
95 95 95 TARGETS

Decriminalization – a prerequisite to ending Aids and TB

The same structural failures that sustain the HIV epidemic also sustain tuberculosis

  • Alankar Malviya
7 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
Eight years of violence and displacement but the lives of the people here do not make headlines
CABO DELGADO

Cabo Delgado: The Mozambican people forgotten by time

Eight years of violence and displacement but the lives of the people here do not make headlines

  • Sebastián Traficante
5 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
There will be no HIV cure without Africa’s involvement. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy
AFRICA

Africa, the cradle of the HIV pandemic, must be the cradle of the cure

The continent has been the testing ground for drugs, devices and diagnostics, many of which never returned in the form of benefit

  • Albert Machinda
4 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
The impact of the Trump administration’s slashing of over half of South Africa’s HIV and TB projects funded by the US government, transcends reduced access to HIV testing and HIV prevention and treatment drugs. Treatment for diabetes, high blood pressure, cervical cancer, depression and anxiety will become harder to come by too. (Flickr)
ANTIRETROVIRAL THERAPY

Trump’s HIV funding cuts will also hit diabetes, cervical cancer and depression hard

As government clinics take on HIV patients who were previously treated by Pepfar-funded projects, the treatment of conditions like diabetes and heart disease will come under…

  • Zano Kunene
10 min read
Foreign aid has been the backbone of Africa’s HIV/Aids response but now the continent must take control of its health future.
AFRICA

A letter to the African Union and the continent’s governments

Aid dependency in the fight against HIV/Aids is not sustainable; Africa must own its health future. With political will, nothing is impossible

  • Tuwilika Elias
4 min read
HIV treatment has, for the first time, been made in Africa.
AFRICAN ECONOMY

The Global Fund has just made history – now it must start a revolution

Africa’s first locally made HIV treatment is more than a milestone, it’s a political, economic and moral turning point in the fight for health sovereignty

  • Tian Johnson
6 min read
If all of its National Institutes of Health funding falls away, the country could lose 70% of its medical research capacity
CLINICAL TRIALS

The US’s NIH funds R6.65 billion of research in South Africa

If all of its National Institutes of Health funding falls away, the country could lose 70% of its medical research capacity

  • Linda Pretorius
  • Jacques Verryn
10 min read
Twenty years of hard lessons — with a dose of good luck and a lot of persistence — has helped Hlokomela Clinic to prepare for the US funding cuts crisis. (Zano Kunene)
ANOVA HEALTH INSTITUTE

How this Limpopo NGO prepared for Trump’s funding cuts

The Anova Health Institute, which received the lion’s share of the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids funding in South Africa, had its support halted in February along with…

  • Zano Kunene
9 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
Funding cuts will reverse the progress made and weaken health systems.
2GETHER 4 SRHR

Africa wins when women’s health is a priority. Here’s why

It is women and girls who will suffer the most from the funding crisis caused by cuts to development aid.

  • Anne Githuku-Shongwe, Lydia Zigomo & Chikwe Ihekweazu
4 min read