“RIP the HIV response”. Protest by South African community health workers for worker’s rights. Photo: Jane Shepherd
Sixteen years have passed since the International AIDS conference was held at Durban – that watershed moment when an eleven year old activist, Nkosi Johnson, stood in the main auditorium and asked for acceptance for people living with HIV. It was a time when the South African government’s AIDS denialism prevented the country from accessing antiretrovirals (ARVs). I was living in Zimbabwe where there was also no national roll out of ARV treatment – the state newspaper encouraged eating garlic and beetroot. My ex-boyfriends died, my friends died, my students’ families died. The cemeteries marched across hills, dotted with plastic flowers.
Now 17 million of us are on antiretroviral treatment (ART), but this year’s conference was not congratulatory. HIV (and TB) infections continue to rise, there are huge barriers to treatment access with 20 million people without treatment, and there is a glaring funding gap. The rhetoric of ending AIDS by 2030 and the 90 90 90 targets for 2020 is meaningless without investment in community participation. Addressing criminalization and the human rights of key populations are pre-requisites for ending AIDS. Ben Plumley (CEO of Pangaea) summed it up: “UN's revised downwards investment estimates didn't come close to recognising the enormity of the long term prevention, testing, stigma, treatment and research needs we urgently face. In fact the complacency they engender, threaten the progress we have made to date.”
