Good news on HIV/AIDS

Editorial Comment: Business Day, 26 July 2012

Good news has been so scarce on the HIV/AIDS front in SA for so long that the latest research results seem to be taking a while to sink in. In a nutshell, they indicate that we are finally starting to turn the corner in the battle to contain the pandemic. While we must guard against complacency, it is also important that we celebrate the fact that the about-turn in government policy on HIV/AIDS that began towards the end of Thabo Mbeki's presidency has had the desired effect.

The seemingly insurmountable hurdles of ignorance, fear, denial and stigmatisation are starting to crumble and lives are being saved. The most dramatic statistical change is evident in the national HIV mother-to-child transmission rate, which Medical Research Council research shows has dropped from 8 percent in 2008 to 2,7 percent last year. The dry figures are impressive enough, but they take on new meaning when translated into lives - about 104 000 babies were saved from infection in 2010 alone. The decrease occurred despite a slight increase in the percentage of infants exposed to the pandemic through their HIV-positive mothers last year, which points to the biggest positive factor being the increase in the number of women who are taking antiretrovirals.

There are now 1,7-million South Africans on treatment, making ours the biggest programme of its type in the world, which is quite a turnaround from the days of President Mbeki questioning whether HIV causes AIDS and former Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang insisting that antiretrovirals were poisonous. The other bit of good news emerged this week from the third National HIV Communications Survey, which showed that more South Africans than ever are taking HIV tests, using condoms and getting circumcised to protect themselves from the disease. These are welcome signs that government communications are at last reaching people and changing behaviour.

Twenty-million people have now been tested in SA, and part of the credit for this must go to President Jacob Zuma, who has made up for his faltering start as an anti-AIDS ambassador by being tested publicly and thereby helping to reduce the stigma associated with the disease. Along with medical advances, such as new drugs to treat opportunistic infections, there is now more cause than ever to regard HIV infection as a treatable condition rather than a death sentence.