US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday signed a new deal supporting efforts to fight AIDS in South Africa, which has the world’s biggest population of people with HIV.<\/p>\n
“South Africa and the entire region has a brighter and healthier and more secure future,” she said while visiting a clinic in the Cape Town township of Delft.<\/p>\n
“Even as we take a moment to say ‘well done’, we cannot make the mistake of thinking that our job is done,” she said. “The disease is still very dangerous.”<\/p>\n
The United States has spent $3.2 billion since 2004 supporting South Africa’s fight against AIDS. The new five-year agreement gives South Africa’s government more control over the spending.<\/p>\n
“Some people may hear ‘South Africa is in the lead’ and think that it means that the US is bowing out,” Clinton said. “Let me say this clearly: the US is not going anywhere.”<\/p>\n
“The partnership is changing for the better,” she said. “Our goal is no new patients — zero.”<\/p>\n
The agreement highlights South Africa’s shift from an international pariah on AIDS, under former president Thabo Mbeki, who refused to believe the scientific evidence that AIDS is caused by a virus — to a celebrated one.<\/p>\n
Now the country runs the world’s largest AIDS treatment programme, with more than 1.3 million people receiving drugs, out of a total infected population of 5.6 million.<\/p>\n
The rate of newborns catching the disease from their mothers during childbirth has fallen from 8 percent in 2008 to 2.7 percent last year. – SAPA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday signed a new deal supporting efforts to fight AIDS in South Africa, which has the world’s biggest population of people with HIV. “South Africa and the entire region has a brighter and healthier and more secure future,” she said while visiting a clinic in the Cape Town … Continue reading “USA has spent $3.2 billion on South Africa’s AIDS programme”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[570,674,12250,732],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aids","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-south-africa","tag-thabo-mbeki"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions\/1026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}