The XIII International AIDS Conference was held in Durban, South Africa, during the week of July 9-14 2000. 12,000 people from all over the world attended, including scientists, clinicians, health care workers, public health agencies, people living with HIV/AIDS, AIDS Non-Governmental Organizations, politicians, and the media. This conference has taken place regularly since its inception in 1985, and now takes place every two years. [1]
Each conference has a theme. The theme for 2000 was "Breaking the Silence", which is described as "the urgent need to break the silence on equal access to treatment and care; improved and ongoing prevention of HIV transmission; governmental and private sector support of HIV education and resources; human rights; access of appropriate and meaningful information to all sectors and ensuring a supportive environment for people living with HIV/AIDS (PWA) in society." [1]
There seems to have been a battle between the political and scientific communities happening on the fringes of the conference. [2]
It was at this conference that Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, then Chairman of the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, first called for a global fund to fight AIDS. This recommendation was picked up the following year in the establishment of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. This can be supported from a presentation which Professor Sachs presented during the conference (slide 10). [3]
An 83-year-old and fragile-looking Nelson Mandela gave the closing address, and part of it is reproduced here:
To have been asked to deliver the closing address at this conference, which in a very literal sense concerns itself with matters of life and death, weighs heavily upon me for the gravity of the responsibility placed on one.
No disrespect is intended towards the many other occasions where one has been privileged to speak, if I say that this is the one event where every word uttered, every gesture made, had to be measured against the effect it can and will have on the lives of millions of concrete, real human beings all over this continent and planet. This is not an academic conference. This is, as I understand it, a gathering of human beings concerned about turning around one of the greatest threats humankind has faced, and certainly the greatest after the end of the great wars of the previous century.
...
We need, and there is increasing evidence of, African resolve to fight this war. Others will not save us if we do not primarily commit ourselves. Let us, however, not underestimate the resources required to conduct this battle. Partnership with the international community is vital. A constant theme in all our messages has been that in this inter-dependent and globalised world, we have indeed again become the keepers of our brother and sister. That cannot be more graphically the case than in the common fight against HIV/AIDS. [2]
HIV/AIDS denialism is the belief, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Some of its proponents reject the existence of HIV, while others accept that HIV exists but argue that it is a harmless passenger virus and not the cause of AIDS. Insofar as they acknowledge AIDS as a real disease, they attribute it to some combination of sexual behavior, recreational drugs, malnutrition, poor sanitation, haemophilia, or the effects of the medications used to treat HIV infection (antiretrovirals).
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is a South African HIV/AIDS activist organisation which was co-founded by the HIV-positive activist Zackie Achmat in 1998. TAC is rooted in the experiences, direct action tactics and anti-apartheid background of its founder. TAC has been credited with forcing the reluctant government of former South African President Thabo Mbeki to begin making antiretroviral drugs available to South Africans.
Nkosi Johnson was a South African child with HIV and AIDS who greatly influenced public perceptions of the pandemic and its effects before his death at the age of 12. He was ranked fifth amongst SABC3's Great South Africans. At the time of his death, he was the longest-surviving child born HIV-positive in South Africa.
The XV International AIDS Conference was held in Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand, from July 11 to July 16, 2004. The main venue for the conference was the IMPACT Muang Thong Thani convention centre at Nonthaburi, north-east of downtown Bangkok. It was the first international AIDS conference to be held in Southeast Asia. International AIDS conferences have been held regularly since the first one in Atlanta in 1985.
Mantombazana "Manto" Edmie Tshabalala-Msimang OMSS was a South African politician. She was Deputy Minister of Justice from 1996 to 1999 and served as Minister of Health from 1999 to 2008 under President Thabo Mbeki. She also served as Minister in the Presidency under President Kgalema Motlanthe from September 2008 to May 2009.
Nkosi's Haven is an NGO in the Johannesburg, South Africa area that offers residential, holistic care and support for mothers and their children whose lives have been impacted by HIV/AIDS. Nkosi's Haven also provides support for orphans, HIV/AIDS affected or not. It aims to improve the productivity of their residents through providing access to medical care, therapy, education and skill building workshops. The goal is to empower residents while providing a safe, dignified home in hopes that all mothers and children are able to become responsible and contributing members of society.
The Durban Declaration is a statement signed by over 5,000 physicians and scientists in 2000, affirming that HIV is the cause of AIDS, seventeen years after the discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. The declaration was drafted in response to HIV/AIDS denialism, and particularly to address South African president Thabo Mbeki's support for AIDS denialists. It was written several weeks before the 2000 International AIDS Conference, held in Durban, South Africa from July 9 to 14, 2000, and was published in the journal Nature to coincide with the Durban conference. The declaration called the evidence that HIV causes AIDS "clear-cut, exhaustive and unambiguous".
Edwin Cameron is a retired judge who served as a Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He is well known for his HIV/AIDS and gay-rights activism and was hailed by Nelson Mandela as "one of South Africa's new heroes". President Ramaphosa appointed him as Inspecting Judge of Correctional Services from 1 January 2020 and in October 2019 he was elected Chancellor of Stellenbosch University.
HIV/AIDS in Lesotho constitutes a very serious threat to Basotho and to Lesotho's economic development. Since its initial detection in 1986, HIV/AIDS has spread at alarming rates in Lesotho. In 2000, King Letsie III declared HIV/AIDS a natural disaster. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in 2016, Lesotho's adult prevalence rate of 25% is the second highest in the world, following Eswatini.
Rwanda faces a generalized epidemic, with an HIV prevalence rate of 3.1 percent among adults ages 15 to 49. The prevalence rate has remained relatively stable, with an overall decline since the late 1990s, partly due to improved HIV surveillance methodology. In general, HIV prevalence is higher in urban areas than in rural areas, and women are at higher risk of HIV infection than men. Young women ages 15 to 24 are twice as likely to be infected with HIV as young men in the same age group. Populations at higher risk of HIV infection include people in prostitution and men attending clinics for sexually transmitted infections.
HIV/AIDS is considered the deadliest epidemic in the 21st century. It is transmitted through sex, intravenous drug use and mother-to-child transmission. Zambia is experiencing a generalized HIV/AIDS epidemic, with a national HIV prevalence rate of 11.3% among adults ages 15 to 49 as of 2018. Per the 2000 Zambian census, the people affected by HIV/AIDS constituted 15% of the total population, amounting to one million, of which 60% were women. The pandemic results in increased number of orphans, with an estimated 600,000 orphans in the country. It was prevalent more in urban areas compared to rural and among all provinces, Copperbelt Province and Lusaka Province had higher occurrence.
Charlene Leonora Smith is a South African journalist, published author of 14 books, and is an authorized biographer of Nobel Peace Prize winner, and former South African President, Nelson Mandela. She is a communications and marketing consultant, and writing teacher, who lives and works in the United States.
Initial events and trends in the discussion of HIV and AIDS in mass media contributed to the stigma and discrimination against those affected with the disease. Later discussion, sometimes led by HIV+ individuals themselves, moved toward advocacy and education on disease prevention and management. The UNESCO report on Journalism Education says, "Well researched television content can create public awareness about HIV prevention, treatment, care and support can potentially influence the development and implementation of relevant policies."
Gisèle Wulfsohn was a South African photographer. Wulfsohn was a newspaper, magazine, and freelance photographer specialising on portrait, education, health and gender issues. She was known for documenting various HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns. She died in 2011 from lung cancer.
In South Africa, HIV/AIDS denialism had a significant impact on public health policy from 1999 to 2008, during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki criticized the scientific consensus that HIV is the cause of AIDS beginning shortly after his election to the presidency. In 2000, he organized a Presidential Advisory Panel regarding HIV/AIDS including several scientists who denied that HIV caused AIDS.
Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus is a licensed clinical psychologist and professor with the University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. Rotheram is the professor-in-residence in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She is the Director of the Global Center for Children and Families at UCLA and the former director of the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services.
Salim S. Abdool Karim is a South African public health physician, epidemiologist and virologist who has played a leading role in the AIDS and COVID-19 pandemic. His scientific contributions have impacted the landscape of HIV prevention and treatment, saving thousands of lives.
Hoosen Mahomed "Jerry" Coovadia was a South African medical doctor, academic, and former anti-apartheid activist. He was previously the Victor Daitz Emeritus Chair and Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Nelson Mandela School of Medicine.
The 49th National Conference of the African National Congress (ANC) was held from 17 to 22 December 1994 in Bloemfontein, the city in which the ANC was founded. The conference took place several months after the South Africa's first democratic elections, at which the ANC had won 62.65% of the national vote and incumbent ANC President Nelson Mandela had been elected national President. It was therefore the ANC's first national conference as a ruling party, and only its second national conference since its unbanning in 1990.
Ndaba Thembekile Zweliyajika Mandela is an author, mentor, spokesperson, entrepreneur, political consultant, and the grandson of Nelson Mandela. He was born in Soweto, South Africa.