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At that time I reported from villages in Eswatini, then known as Swaziland, where I found no more than a handful of people my age, only children and the elderly. I wrote about the day Nelson Mandela from Johannesburg broke a strong taboo and told South Africans that his son had died of AIDS. I told the story of a grandmother named Regine Mamba who was raising 12 orphaned grandchildren in Zambia. I’ve spoken to brave and often hopelessly ill activists who are struggling with their lives to access treatment, like Zackie Achmat, one of the founders of South Africa’s Campaign for the Cure Movement.
Nearly two decades later, the fruits of what they fought for have been vividly displayed, and a useful reminder right now just how possible it is, as another wave of Covid makes this pandemic seem like it’s not over.
Science in the form of drugs that suppress, if not defeat, a deadly virus; a network of fierce, courageous activists; Coordinated international efforts – including a major investment by the US government – all combined to deliver the resounding empty miracle of the Zambian hospital ward.
We know how to do this.
At a clinic outside of Cape Town, Linda-Gail Bekker, a renowned HIV researcher, told me, almost in passing, that “our longevity is back.” When I asked what he meant, he showed me the data: life expectancy for South Africans, whose HIV fell from 63 in 1990 to 53 in 2004, has risen steadily since public health treatment began. system and will exceed 66 this year.
This was just one of a dozen interactions I couldn’t have imagined when I started researching HIV in Africa 25 years ago.
On my last trip, I spent time at a public clinic in Soweto with a community health worker named Nelly Zulu, who told people at the clinic where she worked that when people tested positive for HIV, they were given their first pill. The virus that day: No more of that dreadful wait I used to watch as people watch their immune systems decline until they qualify for scarce drugs.
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