Medicine

In January 2010 at the World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Decade of Vaccines by pledging $10 billion over the next 10 years to support worldwide efforts to develop and deliver vaccines to the world’s poorest countries. The foundation also challenged other global partners to demonstrate their continuing commitment and, in so doing, to dramatically reduce child mortality by the end of the decade. This is a tremendous opportunity for transforming global health and could have significant consequences for child survival while expanding the impact of vaccines across the lifespan, but there is no easy formula for success.

South Africa's Strategic Plan for AIDS, STIs and TB. The plan’s target is that by 2016 80% of people are on ARV treatment, that deaths from TB have been halved, and that new HIV infections are cut by 50%. This plan is unique, because millions of people’s lives depend on its successful implementation. Already there are over a million people on treatment. By the time the plan is complete that number must be three million.

The Survey is used to estimate the national prevalence of HIV and Syphilis infection among pregnant women and then establish HIV prevalence estimate among the adult population of 15-49 year olds. The study also determines the geographical distribution pattern of HIV and Syphilis infection among pregnant women attending antenatal clinics at national and provincial level by both district and age groups.

The Progress report 2011: Global HIV/AIDS response reviews progress made until the end of 2010 in scaling up access to health sector interventions for HIV prevention, treatment, care and support in low–and middle-income countries.

It is the fifth in a series of annual progress reports published since 2006 by WHO, UNICEF and UNAIDS, in collaboration with national and international partners, to monitor key components of the health sector response to the HIV epidemic.

This year's report lays out a three-part, science-based agenda for ending the AIDS epidemic in our lifetimes and synthesizes the actions needed across the spectrum of existing, emerging and long-term biomedical HIV prevention tools that could change the AIDS response forever. As you will see, we have tried to capture the need to deliver, demonstrate and develop (and combine) across a range of prevention options.

A new report released by Women Deliver highlights exciting new partnerships and innovations in cervical cancer prevention and treatment. This report comes at an important time: the GAVI Alliance recently announced its commitment to providing HPV vaccinations for 2 million girls in nine countries by 2015. This is a pivotal milestone in the efforts both to bring global attention to the issue of cervical cancer and to galvanize resources to scale up prevention efforts.

This report highlights the role that the Technical Support Facilities (TSF) have played in Africa and Asia to strengthen countries capacities to fund, plan, manage and coordinate effective, larger scale HIV programs. Established by UNAIDS in 2005, the TSFs have provided support to over 70 countries through 50,000 days of technical assistance and capacity development.

This discussion paper summarizes the approach to HIV prevention programming known as “combination prevention” that UNAIDS recommends to achieve the greatest and most lasting impact on reducing HIV incidence and on improving the well-being of affected communities around the world.