This presentation will give you a brief overview about the history of AIDS in Africa. It inlcudes also the view of the govermental side and the public health. You will see that there exist a huge gap between access to the medicine and the prevention for new infections.

1. The History of AIDS in Africa Stigmatisation and poor education Beatrix Hübner

5. The 1970s – The first AIDS epidemic

6. The 1980s – Spread and reaction

8. Government response to AIDS With a few notable exceptions the 1980s were characterised by an insufficient response to AIDS in Africa 31 . Often government capacity was saturated by immediate economic concerns, war or political crisis. As there was no cure or treatment for HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, government strategies had to focus on prevention . Prevention efforts often include encouraging people to revise their sexual behaviour, by abstaining from sex or delaying first sex, being faithful to one partner or having fewer partners, or using condoms consistently and correctly. For this reason prevention efforts in Africa were often confronted with opposition from religious authorities. Both Muslim and Christian leaders found prevention campaigns such as condom promotion difficult to reconcile with their teachings, despite prevailing evidence that abstinence and mutual monogamy were perhaps not as common as they would like. UNAIDS reported that Many senior politicians were reluctant to admit to a generalised HIV/AIDS epidemic in their country for fear of creating panic, or discouraging tourism. For this reason it was significant that in 1987 President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, a respected African leader, announced to the world that his son, Masuzyo, had died of AIDS. Uganda and Senegal are often cited as countries that did respond quickly and effectively to the AIDS crisis. Other African nations did not respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic so positively. In fact, President Mobutu of the Congo banned the subject from the press for four years between 1983 and 1987. Zimbabwean doctors were instructed not to mention AIDS on death certificates 37 , and Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi and Kenya ‘ignored the subject entirely or denounced the Western press for ‘a new form of hate campaign’’. South Africa ’s white leaders refused to install an AIDS education programme in schools and did not begin to take seriously the danger of a large-scale heterosexual HIV/AIDS epidemic until the end of the decade .

9. The 1990s – Southern Africa and the Fight for Treatment

10. HIV epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1995-2000. As HIV/AIDS entered the southern African countries with force, those infected faced high levels of stigma . In 1998, Gugu Dlamini, a South African AIDS activist, was beaten to death by her neighbours after revealing her HIV positive status on Zulu television. This happened just a month after Deputy President Thabo Mbeki had called for people to ‘break the silence about AIDS’ in order to defeat the epidemic. South Africa had reacted slowly to the emerging epidemic. The ANC had replaced the apartheid government in 1994 and had concentrated on unifying the country’s health systems and expanding primary health care for the poor. This restructuring weakened the health systems just as the HIV/AIDS epidemic was at the peak of expansion. In 1998 the health ministry stopped trials of AZT (HIV-Agent) to prevent mother-to-child-transmission claiming that it was too expensive and that it would focus its funds on other prevention campaigns. This provoked the first major political action by HIV positive Africans over their own treatment. The ANC did not work with AIDS organisations and tension between the party and AIDS activists escalated throughout the decade. Due to an increasing frustration with the governments inefficient action against AIDS in 1998 the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) was founded. Led by Zackie Achmat this group was to become important in the fight for treatment in South Africa .

12. The New Millennium- Global initiatives and drugs roll out

13. Roll Out Addressing the UN assembly in June 2001, President Festus Mogae of Botswana voiced his fears of the impact that HIV/AIDS was having on his country. South Africa’s national HIV treatment programme has been the topic of much debate. The South African government was initially hesitant about providing antiretroviral treatment to HIV-positive people, due to unconventional views about HIV and AIDS amongst the government, including President Mbeki’s questioning of whether HIV really causes AIDS. After pressure from activists (specifically Treatment Action Campaign TAC) the state began to supply the drugs in 2004. But even since treatment began the distribution of antiretroviral drugs has been relatively slow, with only around 33% of people in need receiving treatment at the end of 2006. In a decade in which ethical issues were rising up the corporate agenda, a number of large companies also began to provide AIDS treatment programmes for their employees. The vice-president of Anglo American, a large South African mining firm explained that the cost for the firm was justified as the dramatically reduced absenteeism compensated for three-quarters of the cost of the treatment programme. UNAIDS reported that in total around 17% of those in need of the life-saving drugs in sub-Saharan Africa were receiving them in 2006. It is increasingly clear that access to drugs to treat HIV/AIDS reduces fear and changes social perceptions of people living with the disease. Antiretrovirals mean that contracting HIV is no longer a death sentence and therefore people are more willing to be tested and find out their HIV status. Although HIV related stigma still exists, it is reducing as fear surrounding the disease lessens and people are more willing to speak openly about AIDS. As Nelson Mandela said when announcing the death of his son from AIDS in 2005 "Let us give publicity to HIV/AIDS and not hide it, because [that is] the only way to make it appear like a normal illness" -.

15. Conclusion