Treatment

John Hodgkiss/Perinatal HIV Research Unit (PHRU)

Although there is no cure for HIV/AIDS, several treatments can be used to prolong the lives of those infected with HIV, reduce the chance of mother-to-child transmission, or prevent HIV infection after exposure to the virus.

The treatment of HIV/AIDS — or lack thereof — has remained a hot media topic in South Africa in particular, ever since the pandemic started to take hold in the late 1990s. The government has been routinely criticised by lobby groups such as the Treatment Action Campaign for not doing enough in this area. Their criticism has been echoed in court judgements such as the landmark 2001 Constitutional Court ruling (upheld on appeal in 2002) that the government provide nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women, and by other organisations, such as the South African Human Rights Commission.

Former President Thabo Mbeki’s stance on treatment has also been widely covered in the press. As the timeline in this factsheet shows, he has moved from publicly associating himself with fringe scientific views on the causes and treatment of HIV/AIDS to distancing himself from AIDS dissidents and becoming generally quieter on the issue of treatment while his government has simultaneously changed tack, slowly rolling out a public antiretroviral programme.

President Jacob Zuma is generally seen as a friend of the struggle against HIV/AIDS, though he remains a somewhat controversial figure. Zuma’s past with regard to HIV/AIDS has been plagued with controversy as he knowingly had unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman. However, in his role as president of South Africa he has made a promise to halve the amount of new infections in two years, according to an article published in the Daily News.