Aids at 44: will HIV-negative people take anti-HIV jabs?

Twenty-five years ago, South Africans battled for ARVs to keep people alive. Now the focus has shifted to medicines that can prevent HIV altogether. Health Beat looks how the story has evolved

South Africa has successfully registered twice-a-year anti-HIV jab, lenacapavir.

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.