Our Hiv Programme Is Collapsing - And Our Government Is Nowhere To Be Seen

Were watching the largest HIV treatment programme in the world unravelling in real time. We dont need perfection, but we do need a combination of urgency, action, and strategy to save it, argues Professor Francois Venter.

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.

Two decades ago, South Africas 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 rollout 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.