AIDS 2010 is taking place at an important time in the response to HIV and AIDS. Over the past 15 years, scientific advances have given us the tools to effectively prevent and treat HIV even in the most resource-poor settings. Beginning with a call to action at the XIII International Conference in Durban, South Africa in 2000, and reinforced by community advocacy for universal access over the past seven years, there has been tremendous progress in scaling up HIV treatment, and to a lesser extent HIV prevention, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. These investments have shown positive results, with fewer new infections and AIDS-related deaths reported in 2007, compared with 2003. Yet, with the goal of universal access by 2010 looming, and the deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals following just five years later, there is a need for urgency and accountability and no room for complacency.

Despite growing momentum over the past few years, significant challenges remain. It is now absolutely clear that stigma, discrimination and human rights violations whether focused directly on people with HIV or on particular at-risk groups (such as women and girls, men who have sex with men, people who use drugs, people who trade or sell sex, young people, etc), as well as punitive or misguided policies towards key populations most affected by HIV, are major obstacles to an effective response to HIV.

AIDS 2010 will underscore that the protection of human rights is a fundamental prerequisite to an effective response to HIV. Equally clear to many, though not all, is the important contributions the scale up of HIV programmes has made to broader health and development goals. AIDS 2010 will highlight the many opportunities for synergy and for powerful alliances between these movements.

AIDS 2010 will also provide a multidisciplinary forum for networking and the sharing of information related to new research and evidence-based programmes and policies. It is a chance for the many stakeholders involved in HIV to take stock of where the epidemic is, evaluate recent scientific developments and lessons learnt, and collectively chart a course forward. In particular, AIDS 2010 will facilitate stronger linkages between science and community and will explore in greater depth the important overlap and interaction between and the three programme areas: Science, Community and Leadership and Accountability.

The conference’s host city of Vienna, Austria offers a unique bridge to Eastern Europe and Central Asia, a region with one of the fastest growing epidemics in the world that is fueled primarily by injection drug use, as well as the inadequate response to and hyper criminalization of injecting drug use. An important focus of the conference will be a discussion of how evidence-based policies and programmes for people who inject drugs, including harm reduction strategies, can be expanded, and the influence of global drug policy on HIV prevention, treatment, care and support for people who use drugs. The current state of the epidemic in other regions – in particular southern Africa, which remains the most heavily affected region of the world and where the majority of infections occur in women and girls – will also be explored in detail.