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| 2006 Annual Review |
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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.
HEARD has continued to provide critically needed intellectual leadership for the AIDS response. HEARD’s research agenda has focused primarily on building understanding of the drivers of Africa’s epidemics, vulnerabilities and AIDS impacts. Work has also focused on exploring the systems and capacity issues that need to be addressed in expanding access to AIDS treatment and care; to developing relevant community and policy responses to the exploding orphaning crisis in southern Africa; and, through its scenarios work, to push thinking about the longer term AIDS agenda. HEARD’s three-pronged approach – of research, capacity building and advocacy – makes real sense and has been successfully applied to ensure that new learnings are taken forward in policy and practice. The year 2006 has also been one of reflection and transition for HEARD. HEARD moved to new premises, crafted its own longer term research and advocacy agenda, and forged new partnerships with donors to support this work. These transitions strengthen HEARD’s capacity to provide continuing intellectual leadership and perspective on what needs to be done to get ahead of Africa’s complex epidemics. Reflecting global recognition of its research, convening power and advocacy, HEARD was recently requested to act as secretariat to the Global UNAIDS/World Bank Economics Reference Group. This is an extremely important appointment as HEARD will now have the responsibility of convening the world’s top economists and commissioning research on the pressing and longer term economic challenges of AIDS, especially in Africa. UNAIDS has been proud of, and benefited greatly, from its relationship with HEARD. We have learned much from HEARD’s research and have been stimulated and influenced by Alan Whiteside and his team’s questioning and advocacy. This year’s review provides an excellent overview of these contributions, which I am sure will be deepened and strengthened in 2007.
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