Durban Declaration is published denouncing Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS denialism

The Durban Declaration was a statement signed by over 5 000 people in the scientific community stating that HIV caused AIDS. The declaration was signed and published in response to then President Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS denialism. Mbeki asserted the view that HIV was not the sole cause of AIDS and this viewpoint affected the South African government’s response to the AIDS epidemic. Access to azidothymidine (AZT) was limited due to Mbeki’s belief that it was toxic and not effective in dealing with HIV. Instead, Mbeki espoused the view that AIDS was linked to the issue of poverty and that poverty should be dealt with broadly, rather than focusing on AIDS specifically. Mbeki’s AIDS denialism has become synonymous with his presidency and in 2008 it was determined that his influence on policy resulted in thousands of preventable deaths. The declaration was published to coincide with the International AIDS Conference being held in Durban that year. The document was signed by people with doctorate level qualifications including 11 Nobel Laureates. Despite the document’s strong support for HIV being the cause of AIDS, the South African government’s reaction to the Durban declaration was that it was ‘elitist’. This was consistent with Mbeki’s belief that the link between HIV and AIDS formed part of racist rhetoric that black men were vectors of disease, and was a ploy to assert the superiority of Western medicine over Afro-centric approaches to health and disease. Mbeki and health minister Dr Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang instead advocated for African traditional medicine and approaches to health, seeing poverty as a cause of AIDS rather than a risk factor.