If the history of AIDS has taught us anything, it is that epidemics don’t occur in a vacuum. HIV has exploited our social and political shortcomings—and it has shown again and again that an effective response must span the health sector and go beyond it to address the laws, attitudes and economic injustices that make infection more likely and more lethal.

Well into the third decade of the HIV epidemic, there remains no effective HIV preventive vaccine, microbicide, product or drug to reduce the risk of HIV acquisition. As the numbers of those infected by HIV and dying from AIDS continue to increase, the need for such biomedical HIV preventive interventions becomes ever more urgent. Several such products are at various stages of development, including some currently in phase III efficacy trials. The successful development of effective HIV preventive interventions requires that many different candidates be studied simultaneously in different populations around the world.

It is time for the international community to face the fact that we have a crisis in education. We must be clear that if children are forced out of school, their governments and communities are also failing. As we approach 2015, we must have unwavering support for achieving and exceeding the global education goals we have set for ourselves.

In June 2011, world leaders unanimously adopted the UN General Assembly Political Declaration on AIDS that laid out ambitious targets for the global HIV response. They pledged, among other goals, to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV by 50%, end new HIV infections among children and ensure 15 million people have access to HIV treatment by 2015. While the International Organisation of La Francophonie (IOF) has made considerable progress towards these targets, its member countries are characterized by marked variations in access to treatment and prevention services as well as inadequate funding from both international and domestic sources.

In embracing the targets in the 2011 Political Declaration, countries committed to monitor and report on progress and challenges encountered in their national AIDS responses. To facilitate biennial reporting on national progress, UNAIDS collaborated with partners to develop a set of core indicators against which countries would report. The following slides are a compilation of the epidemiology data and graphics contained in the 2012 Global Report:  Epidemiology slides -  en | fr | es | ru