Building on strong foundations – annual review 2007

Introduction by Alvaro Bermejo

This expansion, supported by an increase in annual expenditure from the UK-based secretariat from $35.8m in 2004 to nearly $62m in 2007, helped support more and more community HIV initiatives, and enabled us to reach over 1.3 million people with direct programmes and services, and another 47.5 million people through information and education campaigns in 2007.

A number of Alliance-supported programmes also had significant impact on national HIV indicators, demonstrating successful community action at a large scale. For example, the Alliance programme in Ukraine accounted for nearly 70% of people accessing antiretroviral treatment across the country, while in Burkina Faso Alliance-supported programmes made up over 50% of the orphans and vulnerable children reached with care and support.

A central part of the Alliance’s strategic framework was rapidly increasing the coverage of community programmes,ensuring that women, girls and other groups highly vulnerable to HIV infection have access to basic services and can contribute to the response. In 2007, over 53.5% of people reached through Alliance supported programmes and projects were women and girls.

While I am proud of the achievements of the Alliance, some of which you can read about in the pages of the annual review, we still haven’t done nearly enough. In 2007 alone another 2.5 million people were newly infected with HIV, and 2.1 million people died of HIV-related illnesses. There is still an enormous amount of work to be done if the international community is to make universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care services a reality by 2010, as agreed by UN governments in 2006. And a lot more work is needed to build the skills of communities so they are able to play their full part in the global response.

The Alliance’s new three-year plan for 2008–2010 sets out our new ambitions to increase the scale and quality of our programmes, support community-based organisations to grow and strengthen, and to participate at the national level in a health sector-wide policy dialogue to allow for more effective HIV responses. The Alliance model of national intermediary organisations is ideally placed to help build local, sustainable capacity in a response that has been, not surprisingly, dominated by an emergency approach.

To make these ambitions a reality we need the continued backing of our supporters and long-term donors – particularly to help provide the unrestricted funding we need to take strategic, long-term choices. As efforts to improve the coordination of health funding through the International Health Partnership and related initiatives are introduced, we need to make sure that a balanced approach to funding health – and health systems – continues. We need a range of mechanisms in place that ensures:

  • the building of strong health and education systems, including communities in this development
  • adequate scale and speed for priority interventions
  • access for the most vulnerable and marginalised groups.

Alvaro Bermejo

Executive director,

International HIV/AIDS Alliance