- Political leadership: Central to an effective response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic is political will and commitment from community level to national leaders.
- A strategic response: Each country in the region needs to have a single national AIDS plan that includes all role players including government, civil society, the private sector and donor organizations. Control of the plan should be located outside the Ministry of Health and be under the direct control of the Head of State. Clear goals and monitoring indicators must be defined.
- A regional plan: In addition to the national plans, there should be a supra-national regional plan that integrates and harmonises the various national plans.
- Mainstreaming HIV/AIDS into all sectors: Multisectoral and multilevel partnerships between government and civil society must be forged and HIV/AIDS issues must be mainstreamed into all sectors.
- Massive scaling up of effective interventions: The current situation of numerous and varied small scale interventions ("boutique" interventions) must be transformed into large scale initiatives based on the best available evidence.
- Putting the HIV/AIDS agenda into major development instruments: The massive scale of resources needed to address the above recommendations requires that HIV/AIDS issues be tied into the major international financing initiatives such as the "Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Debt Initiative". HIV/AIDS issues also must be central to all countries poverty reduction plans and proposals.
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