- This World Aids Day, Health Beat reflects on how far South Africa has come — and how quickly progress can be undone.
- We now have medicine that can stop people from getting HIV, but inequality still determines who can actually get the drugs.
- Judge Edwin Cameron, infected in 1985 and once unsure he would survive, describes what it means to grow old with HIV — from managing his physical health, to the mental weight that long-term survivors bear.
- His message remains one of activism: civil society must keep pushing to end Aids for everyone, not only for those with the right politics and privilege.
- And in Cape Town, researchers are preparing for exactly that future — gearing up to roll out the six-monthly “miracle” prevention injection, lenacapavir, to especially HIV-negative teen girls and young women, who face a high chance of getting the virus.
In today’s newsletter, our Health Beat team looks into South Africa’s long, often precarious journey with HIV. Sign up for our newsletter today.
Anna-Maria van Niekerk is Bhekisisa’s news editor. She joined the centre after six years as the managing editor of the investigative television show, Carte Blanche. Anna-Maria has an extensive career in in-depth health and human rights reporting and has been named both the Vodacom Journalist (2002) and Discovery Health Journalist of the Year (2010) for exposés on the selling of human body parts for muti in Limpopo and the devastating consequences of HIV denialism.
Mia Malan is the founder and editor-in-chief of Bhekisisa. She has worked in newsrooms in Johannesburg, Nairobi and Washington, DC, winning more than 30 awards for her radio, print and television work.
Jessica Pitchford is Bhekisisa's TV and multimedia editor. She's been a journalist since the early nineties and has reported on some pivotal events in South Africa’s political history, such as the country’s transition to democracy and the work of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission.
Jeannine Snyman has worked in TV for over 25 years and has extensive experience in all aspects of the production chain.
