At last, signs of progress on AIDS

It was long years and hundreds of thousands of deaths in coming. But on 1 December, South African President Jacob Zuma stood before a cheering throng in the capital city, Pretoria, and marked World AIDS Day with a pledge “to deploy every effort, mobilize every resource and utilise every skill that our nation possesses” to turn back the advance of the disease. There comes a time in the life of all nations when the only choice is to submit to the enemy or fight, the former anti-apartheid leader told the crowd. “That time has now come in our struggle to overcome AIDS.... We shall not submit.”