Over the past two years, African leaders have been leading efforts to increase attention on HIV prevention. In August 2005, African Health Ministers declared 2006 as the year for Accelerating HIV prevention. This was officially launched by the African Union, with the support of the United Nations in April 2006. In May 2006, SADC and UNAIDS convened an experts “Think Tank” meeting to focus on thesexual transmission of HIV.

This meeting concluded that longer term multiple and concurrent sexual partnerships by men and women with inconsistent condom use, combined with low levels of male circumcision are the key drivers of the epidemic in the sub-region. It identified male attitudes and behaviour, intergenerational sex, gender and sexual violence, stigma and untreated viral STIs as contributing drivers.

Recently, UNAIDS released Practical Guidelines for Intensifying HIV Prevention that aims to assist countries and regions in strengthening their national
responses to HIV prevention. These guidelines recognise that in order to intensify our prevention efforts requires leadership and a return to basics by getting to know our epidemics and to know our response and to prioritise ouractions in addressing those risk factors and drivers that make people vulnerable to HIV infection.

This e-forum, jointly being undertaken by SAfAIDS, the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for eastern and southern Africa and HDN provides a virtual space for region to critically analyse the risk factors and drivers of the epidemic. It is hoped that the discussions will provide innovative and concrete suggestions of ways in which our prevention interventions can be strengthened so that we can begin to reduce the number of new HIV infections in the future.

Note: the UNAIDS Practical Guidelines for Intensifying HIV Prevention: Towards Universal Access can be downloaded from the UNAIDS website, www.unaids.org or the website of the RST-ESA, www.unaidsrstesa.org