GUEST AUTHOR: NPR

In July 2024, we published a story with the headline: “One of the 7 people cured of HIV tells his story. Can his cure work for others.” This summer, at the International AIDS Society conference, came news of an exciting new development in the the ongoing effort to bring the epidemic to an end. This story is the first in our annual end of August series, “Whatever happened to …”

KIGALI, Rwanda — In a landmark first for the continent hardest hit by HIV, a new clinical trial in South Africa has delivered a rare but extraordinary outcome: One young woman may be cured of the virus.

The story begins in May 2016 when Anele got a call from nurses at a local clinical research center in Umlazi township, which lies in South Africa’s southeastern province of KwaZulu-Natal. They told her she needed to come in for an urgent appointment, before breaking the news in person that she had tested positive for HIV. She felt like her world had ended.

“I cried a lot,” recalled Anele, now 32, speaking to a group of assembled scientists, doctors and health officials on the first day at the International AIDS Society (IAS) conference in Kigali, Rwanda in mid-July. “I was only 23. That day, I was not OK at all.” Anele explained at the IAS conference that she did not want to be fully identified due to the ongoing stigma associated with being HIV positive in Umlazi.

It may not have felt like it at the time, but compared with the estimated 5.2 million other women living with HIV in South Africa, Anele was fortunate. Her early diagnosis and treatment plan were only possible because of a new social empowerment and medical program called FRESH (Females Rising through Education, Support and Health) which had begun in Umlazi back in 2012. Six years after Anele’s diagnosis, this program would see her enrolled in the first-ever clinical trial to attempt to cure HIV patients in Africa. 

Read the full article at: Whatever happened to … the race to cure HIV? There’s promising news