SA makes strides in fight against HIV/AIDS
SOUTH Africa has made many advances in the fight against HIV and Aids since the first International Aids Congress 13 years ago, a leading Durban expert has said.
The country now has the largest antiretroviral (ARV) programme in the world, said renowned researcher and international authority on HIV/Aids, Professor Hoosen “Jerry” Coovadia of the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine.
Some of the finest research has also come from South Africa – with local Durban teams also being at the forefront of research.
At the last count, some 13-15 million people had also taken part in South Africa’s massive HIV counselling and testing campaign.
However, the country and the province had the worst figures in the world and “are still at the heart of the epidemic”, said Coovadia, who has a string of honours and awards to his credit for his work.
Some 5.4 million people were HIV-infected countrywide, and using a multiplier of four people to a family, those affected totalled many millions, said Coovadia. Although Gauteng was closing the gap, KZN still carried the biggest burden.
Coovadia was the chairman of the first International Aids Congress held at the ICC in 2000 and recalled that it was a landmark conference and the first to be held in a developing country.
“There were enormous benefits for the world and the country from that conference, but it came at an awkward moment for South Africa,” he said.
“The then president, Thabo Mbeki, and the minister of health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, were HIV denialists. It was a very complex and interesting period.”
Coovadia, with 64 HIV scientists, dashed off a letter to Mbeki criticising him for denying that HIV caused Aids, saying it was a farcical stance in the face of scientific evidence.
Great strides had since been made and the Department of Health was behind the “excep- tional” and biggest ARV programme in the world as well as the successful HIV counselling and testing programme, Coovadia said.
His own particular interest and that of his research team at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine has been the groundbreaking research in mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
The research found that giving an anti-Aids drug as a syrup to babies was safe, and effective in preventing them from getting HIV infection from their HIV-infected mothers through breast-feeding.
This programme had been an “amazing success” and the transmission rate had been reduced from 32 percent to 2.7 percent.
Come 2016 when the 20 000 delegates would descend on the city, it was likely there would have been more advances.