My friends, let us not leave Melbourne thinking that it will be easy to reach the summit. Complacency will cause us to stumble. Will future generations say that we squandered the opportunity of a lifetime? I know the path will be steep and the obstacles many. Let us do this in memory of our colleagues who died en route to Melbourne and the millions who have died of AIDS-related illnesses and of the tens of millions of people living with HIV. If every person here tonight, and everyone working to end the epidemic, acts with the same sense of urgency, the same hope and the same commitment to fight for those left behind, we will scale this mountain. But only if we go arm in arm will we reach the top and the end.

23rd meeting of the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board

It troubles me greatly to say that caring societies are in recession. We are bombarded with news and reports of increasingly terrible acts perpetuated on women. In South Africa according the Medical Research Council of Cape Town University, one in four women report being abused by an intimate partner – and every six hours a woman is killed. In the UK according to the British Crime Survey, a reported 80,000 women suffer rape every year2. Research from a number of countries confirms what seems common sense: there is a strong relationship between intimate partner violence and HIV status.

UNAIDS Executive Director addresses closing of Stop TB Partners Forum

Pot-banging for gender equality and universal access: scaling up our engagement with men and boys

Let me say from the outset of my opening remarks that if our hope is to put AIDS into the history books—we must take bolder action. Most important is preventing new infections. As long as there are five people newly infected for every two people starting HIV treatment—we will not change the trajectory of the epidemic.

When we explore the causes of Africa’s under-economic development, it is common to mention slave trade, colonialism, difficulty in accessing sea trade or inefficient institutions. However, experts in health and economics increasingly agree that it is infectious diseases that play the largest role in Africa’s underdevelopment.

Geneva, Switzerland 24 June 2009

AIDS Response