Testing an AIDS theory on a country with the world’s highest HIV rate

In the country with the world’s highest HIV rate, clinics have been running out of medicine. They break open the bottles of pills, divide them in half, and dole them out in small plastic bags to patients who worry that their lifeline is eroding.

“They say they don’t know how they’ll survive,” says a young woman named Goodness, an advocate for HIV-positive people, who won’t give her full name for fear of punishment by Swaziland’s authoritarian government.

Dependent on AIDS medicine herself, she surveyed clinics and found patients quitting their treatment because of the shrinking supply of drugs. “Their hope is lost, and that’s why they decide to default,” she says. “It hurts. We don’t know what to do.”

On the ground in Swaziland, where today, on World Aids Day, 26 per cent of adults have the AIDS virus, the fight for antiretroviral medicine is a battle for survival. A financial crisis here has disrupted the supply of medicine, forcing a U.S. agency to step in with emergency stocks. Globally, the situation is slipping into the same crisis, with looming cuts to the biggest global AIDS fund.

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During the Canada Post strike announced September 25, 2025, the following measures will be undertaken to minimize service disruption to BC-CfE clients and providers.

  • The BC-CfE Laboratory has transitioned to private courier for delivery of outgoing reports and documents. Results required urgently can be faxed upon request. (Lab Contact Information: Phone 604-806-8775; FAX 604-806-9463)
  • The BC-CfE Drug Treatment Program (DTP) will fax outgoing forms and documents to the provider’s office. (DTP Contact Information: Phone 604-806-8515; FAX 604-806-9044)
  • St. Paul’s Hospital Ambulatory Pharmacy has transitioned to private courier for delivery of medications. We recommend requesting medication at least 2 weeks in advance in case of delivery delays, particularly to rural/remote parts of BC. (Contact Information: Phone 1-800-547-3622; FAX 604-806-8675)

During the Canada Post strike, we recommend that documents be faxed or couriered to our sites, versus utilization of regular mail service

The BC-CfE Laboratory is streamlining reporting processes for certain tests in order to simplify distribution and record-keeping, and to ensure completeness of results. Beginning September 2, 2025, results for the ‘Resistance Analysis of HIV-1 Protease and Reverse Transcriptase’ (Protease-RT) and ‘HIV-1 Integrase Resistance Genotype’ tests will be combined into a single ‘HIV-1 Resistance Genotype Report’.
For more details and example reports, please click on the button below