Treatment Action Campaign
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is a South African HIV/AIDS activist organisation which was co-founded by the HIV-positive activist Zackie Achmat in 1998. TAC is rooted in the experiences, direct action tactics and anti-apartheid background of its founder. TAC has been credited with forcing the reluctant government of former South African President Thabo Mbeki to begin making antiretroviral drugs available to South Africans.
Photo from TAC march on Parliament, February 2003 - photo from Treatment Action Campaign website
Social and political activism to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, as well as to raise funds for effective treatment and care of people with AIDS (PWAs), has taken place in multiple nations across the world since the 1980s. As a disease that began in marginalized populations, efforts to mobilize funding, treatment, and fight discrimination have largely been dependent on the work of grassroots organizers directly confronting public health organizations as well as politicians, drug companies, and other institutions.
A demonstrator waves a placard using the "Silence=Death" slogan during a 2017 event in New York City.
ACT UP protesters in New York City demonstrate against Uganda's controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
During her tenure as Mayor of San Francisco, politician Dianne Feinstein declared the first "AIDS Awareness Week" event.
The AIDS Memorial Quilt is pictured as laid out beside the Washington Monument