Thabo Mbeki surrounded himself by AIDS denialists during his tenure as South Africa’s president. And that decision cost his country an estimated 330,000 lives.

Ignoring medical assurances that HIV does, in fact, cause AIDS, Mbeki chose not to distribute life-saving antiviral drugs, despite the fact that neighboring countries like Namibia and Botswana had tremendous success with similar treatment. 

The Harvard researchers quantified the human cost of that inaction by comparing the number of people who got antiretrovirals in South Africa from 2000 to 2005 with the number the government could have reached had it put in place a workable treatment and prevention program.

They estimated that by 2005, South Africa could have been helping half those in need but had reached only 23 percent. By comparison, Botswana was already providing treatment to 85 percent of those in need, and Namibia to 71 percent.

The 330,000 South Africans who died for lack of treatment and the 35,000 babies who perished because they were infected with HIV together lost at least 3.8 million years of life, the study concluded.

Mbeki, who was forced from office in September, refuses to discuss his decision-making process, but most fingers are pointing to Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the Health Minister who believed garlic and lemon juice, among other things, could help HIV-positive South Africans overcome their ailment.

New President Kgalema Motlanthe wasted no time giving Tshabalala-Msimang the boot when he took over two months ago, and replaced him with Barbara Hogan. Hogan, for her part, says she’s determined to help the estimated 5.9 million South Africans currently living with HIV/AIDS: "I feel ashamed that we have to own up to what Harvard is saying. [But] the era of denialism is over completely in South Africa.”