This year's Annual Report adopts a brand new format. It is based on conceptual advances in HEARD's communications, and reflects several milestones in our development. 

Firstly, this is a Report, rather than a Review, in that we are including audited financial data. This is an important feature in the context of our growth in organisational size and output.

Secondly, in keeping with the contemporary focus on new media technologies, and the need for environmental sensitivity, the Report is significantly shorter and focuses on selected key highlights.  We are making use of "hot links" to give readers access to additional information on our own, and other, websites. 

Finally, this project provides an opportunity to present HEARD's strategic expansion towards 2010 and beyond.

This Report is written in a changing world. The year 2006 marked unprecedented worldwide interest in HIV/AIDS: the largest and most dynamic International AIDS Conference to date was held in Toronto; significant financial pledges were made (although not all of these have been fulfilled). In the past year, 2007, global concerns around HIV/AIDS continue to focus on: accessing more funds; scaling up our responses; addressing women's rights as a key driver of the pandemic; the health care worker crisis; and achieving universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010. These are all crucially important, and require global energy and commitment. The end of the year saw a downward revision of the global estimates of numbers of people living with HIV. However, the situation in Southern Africa bucks global trends. Here, numbers continue to rise and impact will be felt for years to come.

This year also saw global awareness of human health and wellbeing broadening to emphasise climate change and governance as core issues. While supporting this new focus, HEARD is concerned that the HIV/AIDS pandemic should retain its significance as a key development crisis. 

It is clearer than ever before that the epicentre of the pandemic is in Southern Africa. This region is home to the "red countries", a term coined to describe those states that appear in various shades of red on the global prevalence map. This is where, in 2007, HEARD was conducting the bulk of our research, although we seek to influence policy globally.

In the 2006 Review, I reported on the signing of the Joint Financing Arrangement (JFA) and the commitment of five core donors to providing support to HEARD over five years to the end of 2010. By 2007, these commitments were honoured, and we are receiving our core funding from the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (SIDA)/Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (RNE), the British Department for International Development ( DFID), Irish Aid, and UNAIDS.  The JFA has been path-breaking, both for HEARD and for our development partners.  It is the first such arrangement between development agencies and a research institute in Southern Africa, and is one of the first in Africa. The JFA makes provision for additional donors to join the partnership, and we hope that this will happen over the next few years. 

The JFA has given rise to some innovative funding strategies for HEARD. The SIDA office in Lusaka works closely with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and, in effect, this draws Norway into the fold of support for HEARD activities. The international trend seems to be for development agencies to spend more and do more with ever fewer staff, and this is the tendency with some of our partners. Reporting by fund recipients is critical, but inordinate amounts of time can be spent in reporting in different ways to different partners. We are therefore particularly pleased that the JFA sets out clear standards for reporting in an efficient and streamlined manner.

Also very welcome is the innovative DFID/SIDA ‘silent partnership' through which DFID provides funding to SIDA for onward allocation to HEARD; as such, DFID's administrative processes are eased and HEARD's reporting requirements are consolidated. 

During 2005, HEARD developed a 10-year Strategic Plan and a five-year Business Plan, which provided the basis for our future direction and donor funding. These are reported on elsewhere in the Annual Report, but here I want to note that with the money flowing in, we have gained momentum and held two important donor meetings in 2007.  Our two core research programmes - "Systematic interpretations and responses to the pandemic" and "The effects of the pandemic on vulnerability" - have taken discernible shape during 2007. We have built vibrant new partnerships, and strengthened existing collaborations to ensure that HEARD's delivery against our strategy is undertaken across Africa and the globe.

To achieve our targets, it has been necessary to review our strategic operations, including project management, staffing and financial systems, and to set up a discrete communications and marketing programme. We are very pleased to report that our financial systems capacity has been fortified with senior management expertise; however, retention of human resources remains one of the key challenges in the organisation.  A sign of success in the professional development of our staff is that they have been headhunted by other organisations, NGOs, University departments and the private sector. 

During 2007 we developed some creative initiatives around the staffing gap. We continue to recognise the need to support academic development and have appointed junior researchers who will receive professional mentoring. We have developed a "Junior Research Fellow Programme" with the London School of Economics and welcomed the first two Fellows in 2007.  Senior research staff have been recruited through a mix of secondments and "time buy-outs", directed towards acquiring mentoring assistance and building research capacity.  In the coming year, the focus will be on bolstering our project administration systems. 

This past year saw several arrivals and some departures. I want particularly to note that Nina Veenstra, a senior researcher and the first HEARD employee to write and submit a PhD (based in part on her work with us), has moved on.  One of her final outputs was an article we co-authored on "HIV/AIDS and Development: Perspectives for Commonwealth Finance Ministers", published in the Commemorative Report of their 2007 Meeting in Guyana during October. This presented our framework of the pandemic's impact on macro-economic growth in terms of the Millennium Development Goals.  It is this kind of opportunity that indicates the global scope and nature of HEARD's programme of knowledge advancement, as described in this Annual Report.

Obed Qulo, HEARD's Operations Director, and Programme Administrators Janitha Mahabeer and Kerry-Ann Lupke, left by the end of 2007.  They and others mentioned elsewhere in our website news will be missed.  For their unfailing support during the past year, we are deeply grateful to Professor Ahmed Bawa, formerly UKZN's Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, Knowledge Production and Partnerships, and to his successor, Professor Johan Jacobs; to Professor Slim Abdool Karim, UKZN Pro Vice-Chancellor; to Professor Kantilal Bhowan, Acting Dean of the Faculty of Management Studies, and to Professor Trevor Jones, Acting Head of the School of Economics and Finance.

One area that is close to my heart is our work in Swaziland. Reported on elsewhere in this document is our study on ‘Rethinking Emergencies' for the National Response Council on HIV/AIDS (NERCHA). This research has generated a resounding "wake-up call" in Swaziland and beyond. I was honoured to be invited to talk on the report in Swaziland in November. I believe there are clear signs of hope in that little country. These may be replicable in the region.