Durban - Durban’s streets on Monday hummed with the sound of an estimated 10 000 chanting HIV activists hailing from around the globe, demanding a revitalised response to the Aids epidemic.
“We need to wake the world up because the fight against HIV is not over. When 20 million people don’t have access to medicines that could save their lives, we cannot say the Aids epidemic is under control,” said Mark Heywood, head of social justice organisation Section27.
He spoke amid a sea of white and purple T-shirts reading “HIV positive” as the group marched from King Dinizulu Park to the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre – the site of the 21st International Aids Conference, which returned to Durban after being held there in 2000.
Activists said a political decision taken a few weeks ago by UN member states to end the Aids epidemic by 2030 was disconnected from the realities of people living with HIV.
“How can we talk about an end to Aids when 20 million out of the 37 million people living with HIV around the world don’t have treatment? How can we talk about an end to Aids when people are being turned away from facilities with no ARVs?” asked Anele Yawa, who heads the Treatment Action Campaign, South Africa’s biggest HIV lobby group.
Led by the TAC, activists delivered a memorandum to key political figures in the Aids response, including Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and US ambassador Patrick Gaspard.
“We are calling on Ban Ki-moon to man up and provide leadership globally,” said Yawa.
Wearing a red T-shirt, Yves Yomb from the Cameroonian organisation Africa Gay Network said the 2030 goal was unrealistic. “To achieve this, we need to increase funding, look at human rights seriously and include all those who need to be included – which is not happening now,” he said.
Although Aids is treatable and preventable, globally over 1 million people die each year from the disease. This is while funding from wealthy countries dropped substantially for the first time last year.
“Technically we have the means to end Aids by 2030, but there is a big difference between saying and doing. We need political commitment to increase funding and to make treatment available to all,” said Antoine Henry, from France’s biggest HIV advocacy organisation, AIDES.
Holding a poster reading “Missing medicines in clinics”, Maria Malu from the Philippines said the HIV response needed to be “rebooted”.
“We’re here today because we need renewed activism to continue this long journey – and we’re not there yet.”
Representing 7 Sisters, a coalition of Aids organisations in the Asia Pacific, Malu said new energy was needed as “we’ve become complacent in the past 10 to 15 years”.
“People feel like the end is near but that is just not the reality – we need global solidarity to get this message across.”
Pastor Milton Cele from the KwaZulu-Natal Christian Council led a prayer through a megaphone calling on “God to heal this disease and for the government to supply treatment to every single person who needs it”.
Heywood, who “marched these same streets in 2000 calling for the government to supply treatment at a time when there was none, except for the rich”, said he saw a “similar determination” today.
“The activism of 16 years ago saved 15 million lives and showed that the world can care. We’re here today in solidarity with the people still dying in the hope that we can save the lives of 20 million more,” he said.
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