Fighting for life in a time of AIDS denial

• Autores: Sarah Wild
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3118, 2017, págs. 40-41
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Wild discusses how Glenda Gray helped lead the fight against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in South Africa. The 1990s brought democracy to South Africa--but also an explosion in HIV infections. More than 1.5 million of the country's 38-million population were infected with HIV when apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela came to power in 1994. By 2000, 1 in 5 pregnant women were HIV-positive with about 70,000 infected babies born each year. Under Mandela, Gray had been on the side of the government. She was drafting South Africa's plan to tackle HIV and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), including the roll-out of nationwide treatment. But in 1999 the political landscape shifted. A new president, Thabo Mbeki, had prejudices about science. Mbeki's line was that poor nutrition, rather than HIV, was the cause of AIDS. Suddenly she found herself at loggerheads with the very officials she had been working well with for years--except now they were advocating beetroot and garlic to prevent AIDS.