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Spread of AIDS in Africa Is Outpacing Treatment
"At the moment, I just see a never- ending sea of disaster," says Francois Venter of the AIDS clinic at Johannesburg Hospital, one of the best treatment facilities in Africa.
(By Craig Timberg -- The Washington Post)
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"The whole way of thinking is toward treatment," Leclerc-Madlala said. "But it doesn't solve the problem."
A Wave of Optimism
Venter was a doctor in training at Johannesburg Hospital, a vast, hilltop government facility, when he saw a hemophiliac patient receive antiretroviral drugs through a feeding tube as he lay, nearly lifeless, on a bed. A few weeks later, walking unassisted, the man was discharged.
"It was phenomenal," Venter recalled of his first encounter with the medicines that prevent HIV from reproducing. "It was nothing short of a miracle."
The year was 1997, and antiretrovirals were already becoming widely available in wealthy nations. With the drugs, all but the most seriously ill AIDS patients were able to restore their immune systems, control opportunistic infections, regain lost weight and return to work.
But in those early years, the medicine cost thousands of dollars annually for each patient. Faced with millions of infected people, the South African government balked at paying the bill. And President Thabo Mbeki controversially questioned the drugs' safety and effectiveness.
Venter, though, was a believer. Through clinical trials and an informal smuggling ring run by AIDS activists, the hospital was able to keep several hundred patients alive. Some of those also paid for their own pills, often the cheapest, most toxic combinations available.
"I'd say to patients, 'How much can you afford?' " Venter recalled. Based on the answer, he would reply: "This is what I can give you. It's not very good, but it'll buy you a couple months."
That's how Ingrid Moloi -- weighing 86 pounds, with night sweats, tuberculosis and meningitis -- started on antiretroviral drugs in March 2002.
International pressure on pharmaceutical companies had by then begun to bring down the prices of antiretrovirals, but a standard three-drug combination still cost $100 a month, more than double what Moloi earned caring for AIDS orphans for a charity group. A friend paid the bill, allowing Moloi, now 33, to begin a painful recovery that featured severe headaches and sores on her legs.
Five years into what she jokingly calls her "marriage" to the medicine she takes twice each day, Moloi has a round face, swept-back hair and a plump body twice its previous size.
"Really, the results are fantastic," Moloi said on a recent visit to Venter's clinic. "I should have died a long time ago."
Such results spurred a wave of optimism about treatment that eventually swept away political resistance to a mass rollout of antiretrovirals in Africa.
