Rushed in as a last minute substitute speaker for the Minister of Health, the head of the national health department's HIV/AIDS cluster, Dr Rose Mulumba, has told students that prohibitive costs were the reason for the long delay in providing antiretroviral treatment in the public health sector. When Dr Rose Mulumba first confronted the figures on her computer screen that showed her how much it would cost to treat South Africans requiring antiretrovirals she had to get up, “clear my head” and recalculate the numbers.