At the 21st International AIDS conference in Durban, South Africa, Nobel laureates met alongside transgender sex workers, activist grandmothers alongside gay men-over 18,000 delegates with over 18,000 stories of a virus that continues to elude us. Natasha Mitchell shares 10 things she learned from her days observing the action.
1. People power really works
Herbs, beetroot, and lemon juice. That’s what a generation of South Africans were told would fix AIDS.
When the AIDS conference last met in Durban 16 years ago, things were really dire. The country’s president Thabo Mbeki and his health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang were prominent AIDS denialists, claiming that HIV didn’t cause AIDS and barring access to the new antiretroviral treatments (ARVs) which had turned the epidemic around in the west almost overnight.
The drugs were also prohibitively expensive because of pharmaceutical company patents. Hundreds of thousands of South Africans died and a generation was orphaned. Nearly one in five South Africans are HIV-positive today.
In 2000, the AIDS conference was held in South Africa to give local activists a global voice. The movement grew. It was heard. And today, South Africa has the largest HIV treatment program in the world, and ARVs are more affordable.
Yvette Raphael, who was a new mother when she was diagnosed with HIV at age 26, found solidarity amongst other protesters.
‘I just remember death. I just remember going every single day to a funeral. I remember smelling death,’ she says.