New from CFR: John Campbell on South Africa’s HIV/AIDS Past
![Anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs sit on a shelf in the pharmacy at a clinic in Cape Town's Khayelitsha township on February 15, 2010 (Finbarr O'Reilly/Courtesy Reuters).](http://cdn.cfr.org/sites/default/files/styles/slide_3_2/public/image/2012/07/campbell-africa-african-union-aids-ARV.webp)
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In a post yesterday on his blog, CFR Senior Fellow John Campbell wrote about South Africa’s history of combating HIV/AIDS. He focuses on Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who was just appointed chairperson of the African Union Commission after serving as South Africa’s health and then foreign minister under administrations that took questionable approaches to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. As Campbell writes:
The Mbeki government sponsored virodene, essentially a quack remedy, for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, and did not distribute antiretrovirals through the public health system and for a time even blocked AZT trials. It took years for South Africa to join the scientific mainstream in HIV/AIDS treatment. The disease remains stigmatized despite Nelson Mandela’s public acknowledgement after he had left office that a son had died of the disease.
You can read the full post here.
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