In Johannesburg's HIV clinics and beyond, South Africa is confronting a familiar adversary wearing a new face: the stigma that transforms a medical condition into a moral verdict. As antiretroviral therapy reshapes the bodies of those it saves, and as obesity rises across a population shaped by poverty and ultra-processed food, the country finds itself at a crossroads it has stood at before. The hard-won wisdom of the HIV activist era — that shame delays treatment, that withholding medicine from the poor is a political choice, not an economic necessity — now demands application to a crisis the
South Africa must apply HIV's stigma lessons to obesity crisis
People living with HIV experience weight gain from antiretroviral therapy, creating double stigma and limiting access to medical treatment in public health systems.