By Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa
During the course of the past week, more than 18,000 scientists, activists, policy makers and health practitioners from around the world have gathered in Durban at the 21st International AIDS Conference to take stock of the state of the epidemic.
They have also had an opportunity to witness the remarkable progress that South Africa has made in tackling this disease and to better understand the significant challenges that still remain. The country has come a long way. In 2009, it was estimated that South Africa had 5.6 million people living with HIV, the most of any country in the world. This represented about a quarter of those infected in sub-Saharan Africa and a sixth of the global burden of the disease.
On World AIDS Day in 2009, government introduced a range of interventions to turn around what had become a national catastrophe. Since then, government has been working closely with social partners across the country as well as with international partners and the donor community to secure continuous progress.
This has had a profound effect. A fifth of the 17 million people on antiretroviral treatment across the world live in South Africa. We have dramatically reduced the transmission of HIV from mother to child. In 2004, there were 70,000 babies born HIV positive in this country; today this has been reduced to less than 6,000. In South Africa,
