Although much work remains to be done, a United Nations global reporting system on HIV/AIDS has already yielded an "unequaled wealth of data" on progress toward meeting UN targets for responding to the global HIV epidemic. An update on the development of the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS (UNGASS) global reporting system appears in a special supplement to JAIDS: Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. JAIDS is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading provider of information and business intelligence for students, professionals, and institutions in medicine, nursing, allied health, and pharmacy.
The UNGASS system provides "a good indication of the overall progress in the global response to HIV"—including whether the world community is on track to meet the UN's ambitious timetable for turning the tide in the fight against HIV. Guest editors of the special supplement are Deborah Rugg, PhD, of The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Michel Carel, PhD, of Free University Brussels, and Hein Marais, an Independent Writer in Johannesburg, South Africa.
UNGASS Process a 'Catalyst' for Development of National HIV Monitoring Systems
The 11 articles in the supplement provide a look into the development of the UNGASS global reporting system, being implemented as part of the 2001 UNGASS Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS. The UNGASS system provides a framework for biennial Country Progress Reports, which will be used to assess attainment of the UN's Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 6: halting and reversing the HIV epidemic by 2015.
As of 2008, the UNGASS system included data from 147 countries—through the first three rounds of reporting, response rates increased from 54 to 77 percent. The reports have provided unprecedented data on patterns of HIV epidemics, behaviours related to the spread or control of HIV, and progress in implementing programmes essential to meeting the MDG 6 targets.
Several articles present preliminary analyses of data on the global response to the HIV epidemic. At this point—midway to the 2015 deadline for MDG 6—the data show "limited progress" in most areas: