LISTEN | No time to be complacent about the war against HIV/Aids

SA has the largest antiretroviral rollout programme in the world. Yet despite this achievement, Judi Nwokedi, chair of the country’s Aids Consortium, warns against complacency.

She argues that it is a mistake to think living with HIV is akin to having chronic illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension because, unlike these, it comes with “a lot of excess baggage”. In many families, it is still not spoken about and many people living with HIV experience derision. The war against HIV/Aids, she warns, will not end by 2030 if we do not deal stigma a fatal blow.​

In this edition of Eusebius on TimesLIVE, Eusebius McKaiser is joined by Nwokedi to take stock of the war against HIV/Aids on World Aids Day.

Nwokedi supports former Constitutional Court justice Edwin Cameron’s theory, which he argued in his memoir Witness to AIDS, that conservative and unhealthy attitudes towards sex drive stigma.

Sexual intercourse is the primary mode of HIV transmission, though not the only one, and assumptions about promiscuity, reckless sexual choices and immorality are often made when someone discloses their HIV status. Nwokedi urges us to deal with these drivers of stigma if we are to win the war against HIV/Aids.

The discussion ends with a focus on the role of the state. One in five of the 37,7-million people infected with HIV globally live in SA. Last year, no fewer than 240,000 of the new global HIV infections happened in this country. Nwokedi argues that insufficient support for community-based and civil society organisations make it hard to reverse these statistics.

She appeals to the state to ensure more adequate resources are allocated to fight these battles and improve relations with organisations that often work with little assistance to try to ensure inequitable access to treatment and other psychosocial resources ends. 

Eusebius McKaiser is a TimesLIVE and Sunday Times Daily contributor and analyst.