From the first reported cases of HIV in 1981 to the latest breakthroughs in long-acting prevention, this Spotlight timeline traces key moments in the global and South African response to the virus. It highlights scientific milestones, political controversies, activism, and the human stories that shaped one of the most significant public health challenges of our time.
Spotlight has launched a new HIV dashboard and graph generator based on outputs from the Thembisa model. Our hope is that this dashboard will help the public and people working in healthcare to find important HIV numbers more easily. Please take a look and let us know what you think of it.
South Africa is staging a sequel to Mbeki-era denialism, only this time, the science, solutions, and costs are clearer, argues Professor Francois Venter.
We’re watching the largest HIV treatment programme in the world unravelling in real time. We don’t need perfection, but we do need a combination of urgency, action, and strategy to save it, argues Professor Francois Venter.
South Africa’s health ombud Professor Malegapuru Makgoba’s tenure as ombud will end at the end of May. Bienne Huisman spoke to him about headline-making investigations into the Life Esidemeni tragedy and conditions at Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital, his childhood in Limpopo, and how he side-stepped former President Nelson Mandela’s invitation to join the African National Congress.
We reflect in pictures South Africa’s journey in the struggle against HIV since 2000.
By Anso Thom
Having reported with many journalist colleagues on the darkest days on former President Thabo Mbeki and his health minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s distressing, fatal and quite mad HIV-denialism, the latest saga around social grants did bring back a sense of déjà vu.
By Anso Thom – For a long time, South Africa has been a country where charlatans are able to flourish and peddle dangerous remedies for all kinds of ailments.
