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 At the epicenter of the worldwide AIDS pandemic, South Africa now
boasts the largest treatment program in the world, with 3.4 million
people receiving the antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that allow those
living with HIV to lead normal lives.
The contrast with the Mbeki era, when the health minister touted
beetroot and the African potato as AIDS remedies and hundreds of
delegates walked out of the conference when the president suggested
poverty might be the leading cause of AIDS, could hardly be sharper.
During his presidency, Mbeki embraced a fringe movement of HIV
deniers and resisted international and domestic pressure to
seriously address the AIDS crisis. Instead, he denounced ARVs as
Western inventions with poisonous side effects.
"The patients were dying like flies. We were treating them with
tender loving care and vitamins. We had nothing," said Dr. Jean
Bassett, who founded the HIV treatment center at the Witkoppen
Clinic in Johannesburg in 1996.
Patience Ndlovu was one of those who received treatment at the
clinic. Diagnosed with HIV in 2002, she received only vitamins as
treatment at first.
“They were difficult times. To raise a child and me being in that
status, I was so scared," Ndlovu, now 38, said.
Ndlovu said that, at her lowest point, her CD4 count – a measure of
how well the immune system is working – had dropped below 200,
meaning her condition had progressed to AIDS.
She began receiving ARVs in 2004 after the Mbeki government began a
reluctant roll-out of the life-saving drugs to the sickest AIDS
patients following a 2003 court ruling. She recovered.
NEEDLESS DEATHS
Many South Africans living with HIV were not so lucky. A 2008
Harvard University study estimated that Mbeki's obstruction resulted
in at least 330,000 unnecessary deaths in the first half of the
decade.
“It was a lost decade. We blew the years 2000 to 2008 with political
obfuscation," said Mark Heywood, cofounder of the Treatment Action
Campaign, an advocacy group that for many years was the leading
public voice on HIV in South Africa.
Major change did not come until new leadership was in place. Mbeki
was ousted in 2008, and the following year Aaron Motsoaledi, a
respected doctor, was appointed health minister by new South African
president Jacob Zuma.
Motsoaledi immediately refocused the government response to the
pandemic, launching a nationwide testing campaign and expanding ARV
treatment.
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“Motsoaledi has done a remarkable job,” said Dr. Chris Beyrer,
president of the International AIDS Society, the organizer of the
conference in Durban from July 18 to 22.
“For South Africa to have over three million on antiviral therapy –
that is just extraordinary.”
Today seven million South Africans, 19 percent of the adult
population, live with HIV.
The epidemic robbed many families of breadwinners, created an army
of orphans and struck down millions in the prime of their working
lives. While great progress in providing treatment has been made,
the social and economic costs of the delayed response are still
being felt.
“Mbeki was responsible for a huge number of people dying,” said Dr.
Francois Venter, Deputy Executive Director of the Reproductive
Health and HIV Institute at Johannesburg's University of the
Witwatersrand.
“He has a large amount of accounting to do for a huge number of
people who are dead and families who are decimated and an economy
that could be much stronger," he said.
Mbeki remains unfazed by such attacks. In a letter posted on his
foundation's website in March of this year, he pushed back against
critics of his record on HIV, repeating his assertion that a "virus
cannot cause a syndrome."
For those like Ndlovu, the shift in South Africa’s response to the
HIV epidemic has saved and changed lives.
“It is a normal life. You’ve got this disease, but you’re still
alive. As long as you take your treatment and follow what your
doctors are telling you, everything will be OK," she said.
(Editing by Ed Stoddard and Tom Heneghan)
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