Aids: your life is in your hands

Covid knocked pushed many serious societal issues into the background – but now we are starting to see the effect of that and what happens when problems are put on the back burner.

It is shocking to hear that as the 11th SA Aids Conference got under way on Tuesday in Durban, new figures revealed that about 1 300 young people between the ages of 15 and 24 in KwaZulu-Natal are being infected weekly by HIV.

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It’s almost as if the killer epidemic – which cost hundreds of thousands of South African lives, including those in the prime of their existence – never happened.

The infection rate poses a serious question about whether SA and its partners in the Global Alliance for Ending Aids in Children by 2030 will be able to achieve their lofty goal. It is also a ringing condemnation of both failed education programmes and a lack of sexual discipline in our people.

There are 38 million people globally living with HIV and eight million of those are living here, making us by far the world’s worst affected country.

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The government has done good work in tackling the crisis, although it admits many programmes were sidelined by Covid. It has also had help from friends – as the haters of the West need to acknowledge.

The US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, or Pepfar, was initiated in 2003 by then President George W Bush. John Nkengasong, the head of Pepfar, once estimated it had saved 25 million lives and allowed 5.5 million children to be born free of HIV.

He added that life expectancy has improved by 12 to 15 years in some African nations. Ultimately, though, South Africans need to realise their life is in their own hands and that they need to become more responsible when it comes to having unprotected sex.

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