Professor Linda-Gail Bekker, Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation
We are delighted to welcome delegates from all over the world to the 4th Southern African AIDS Conference in Durban South Africa, 31 March - 3 April 2009.There is an important new aspect to this 4th conference that will build on the successful conferences of the preceding years. Recognition that one of the hardest hit regions in the world is that of Southern Africa and the southern tip of Africa continues to see rising numbers of new infections, the conference organisers and scientific committee of 2009 have agreed that the conference reach should be extending to our neighbouring countries and we extend a particularly hearty welcome to Southern Africa.
Sobering reports continue to identify Africa has the global epicentre of the AIDS pandemic and describe the epidemic as highly diverse and especially severe in southern Africa where some of the epidemics continue to expand. Even where epidemics are levelling off in this region they are doing so at exceptionally high levels. An estimated 22.5 million adults and children in sub-Saharan Africa were living with HIV in 2007. By April of that year, 1.3 million people in the region were receiving antiretroviral therapy. Globally, however, antiretroviral drugs reach only1 in 5 who need themand currently only 9% of pregnant women living with HIV in the developing world are provided with drugs to prevent the virus being transmitted to their babies.
Our theme this year:‘Scaling up for success’ recognises that there is an urgency to take stock of best practices in treatment and prevention and to scale these up sufficiently to begin to roll back the onslaught in numbers and impact that the epidemic is currently waging in Southern Africa. We know what needs to be done. We have a National Strategic Plan that is all at once comprehensive, challenging and ambitious. We need to examine the evidence of how these goals can be achieved critically, assess feasibility and then remove all obstacles and barriers to implement as widely and as efficiently as possible. We need to identify the gaps in the evidence and systematically set out to meet those knowledge gaps.
More than ever before we need to come together as a region, declare war on the epidemic and begin to see the rates in Southern Africa decline.
