Associate Professor Linda-Gail Bekker

We are delighted to welcome delegates from all over the world to the 4th SA 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 committee of 2009 have agreed that the conference reach should be extending to our neighboring countries and we extend a particularly hearty welcome to Southern Africa. Sobering reports continue to identify Africa has the global epicenter 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 leveling 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 only 1 in 5 who need them and 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.