The HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to outpace the global response. Although important progress has been made in expanding access to HIV prevention, treatment and support, such services currently reach only a fraction of those in need. Turning the tide against the epidemic will require significantly stronger and sustained national efforts. To achieve this, a number of key challenges were identified: implementation; co-ordination; capacity; leadership; financing; social barriers and a renewed commitment to the principle of active involvement of people living with HIV & civil society as key pillars in all levels of the response

"Knowing your epidemic" is essential for everyone involved in the response to HIV. Extensively illustrated with graphs and charts, this biennial report presents concise but comprehensive summaries of major issues in the global AIDS response. Annexes provide HIV estimates and data 2001 and 2007, and also country progress indicators.

Critical health communication scholars point out that the acceptance of HIV risk prevention methods are bound inside inequitable structures of power and knowledge. Nicola Bulled’s in-depth ethnographic account of how these messages are selected, transmitted and reacted to by young adults in the AIDS-torn population of Lesotho in southern Africa provides a crucial example of the importance of a culture-centered approach to health communication. She shows the clash between traditional western perceptions of how increased knowledge will increase compliance with western ideas of prevention, and mixed messages offered by local religious, educational, and media institutions. Bulled also demonstrates how structural and geographical forces prevent the delivery and acceptance of health messages, and how local communities shape their own knowledge of health, disease and illness. This volume will be of interest to medical anthropologists and sociologists, to those in health communication, and to researchers working on issues related to HIV.