The Road Map will focus on key population groups such as women and youth as well as important priorities like human rights, funding health, political leadership and living positively. Some of the specific issues to be addressed in the Road Map are a programme on prevention of mother to child transmission, monitoring government agency responses to gender based violence and applying pressure for better performance when it so required, organising social mobilisation events on World AIDS day.

The process will be driven by a multi-partner Co-ordination Committee and a Co-ordinator. It will run until December 2010 when a major conference will be held to review the outcome of the entire process and also seek a way forward beyond 2010.

The Road Map process has been necessitated by the need to have a co-ordinated continental response to the ever growing HIV crisis in Africa.

At present, it is estimated that there are 33 million people around the world who are infected with HIV according to the UNAIDS (2009 Report). As thousands of people worldwide continue to get infected with HIV every day, many more that need treatment do not have access to it.

An estimated 1.9 million [1.6 million–2.1 million] people were newly infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in 2008, bringing to 22 million [20.5 million–23.6 million] the number of people living with HIV. Two thirds (67%) of the global total of 32.9 million [30.3 million–36.1 million] people with HIV lives in this region, and three quarters (75%) of all AIDS deaths in 2007 occurred there.

It is against this backdrop that the World AIDS Campaign; together with other key African civil society partners held a regional meeting in Nairobi between 31 May and 2 June 2009 to discuss an 18 month plan of action to achieving Universal Access to treatment, care and support in Africa.

This plan is underpinned by a human rights framework to ensure that marginal communities are not denied services, and it is embedded in the obligation on governments and donor nations to deliver on their promises to fund and deliver Universal Access by the end of 2010.

A driving theme of the meeting was on the urgency of moving beyond rhetoric to action. To achieve that, the meeting focused on structures which deliver results, on firm commitments from specific agencies and networks and on a clear operational Road map for Universal Access in Africa.