Mark Stirling, Director – UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Eastern and Southern Africa The year 2006 was a critical one in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Africa’s leaders committed themselves to ensuring universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care services for all vulnerable and in need; national strategies were reviewed and roadmaps developed to close treatment and prevention gaps: The Toronto conference helped reposition the priority of HIV prevention; and, day-in day-out work at the coalface of the epidemic continued as hundreds of thousands of dedicated and committed youth, health and development workers, community and faith leaders, activists, researchers and NGO staff worked tirelessly to confront the epidemic. The fruits of all this effort are starting to pay off. By the end of 2006 about one-in-five people in Africa needing anti-retroviral therapy are receiving it; PMTCT programmes are finally starting to expand to scale, prevention against thousands of HIV infections amongst newborn infants; hundreds of thousands of children orphaned by AIDS are finally receiving social support; and evidence is finally emerging that prevention efforts are starting to have effect. The bottom line – good progress achieved, but the vulnerability and hurt of the epidemic remains deep and pervasive, and more, much more remains to be done.