This World Aids Day, Health Beat reflects on how far South Africa has come and how quickly progress can be undone.
We now have medicine that can stop people from getting HIV, but inequality still determines who can actually get the drugs.
Judge Edwin Cameron, infected in 1985 and once unsure he would survive, describes what it means to grow old with HIV from managing his physical health, to the mental weight that long-term survivors bear.
His message remains one of activism: civil society must keep pushing to end Aids for everyone, not only for those with the right politics and privilege.
And in Cape Town, researchers are preparing for exactly that future gearing up to roll out the six-monthly miracle prevention injection, lenacapavir, to especially HIV-negative teen girls and young women, who face a high chance of getting the virus.
Intodays newsletter, our Health Beat team looks into South Africas long, often precarious journey with HIV.Sign up for our newsletter today.
