The HIV implementers' meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, 16-19 June 2007, will bring together programme implementers, researchers, representatives of donors who are funding HIV programmes, and international agencies tasked with controlling the global HIV epidemic. The meeting will focus on three initiatives that account for about 64% of international financing towards fighting HIV1—the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria; the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; and the World Bank's Multi-country AIDS Programme. The meeting aims to facilitate an open dialogue about the future direction of HIV programmes, and it will focus on identifying crucial barriers to and best practices in expanding efforts to control the epidemic.2

In this week's BMJ, Reithinger and colleagues3 discuss the difficulties in evaluating the effectiveness of programmes to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child. Difficulties include the inadequacy of current indicators used to monitor and evaluate operational programmes; weak health information systems, especially in the poorest countries of Africa which, for example, make it difficult to tell whether pregnant women who tested positive subsequently received treatment; and poor quality of interventions in terms of care offered and adherence to treatment. All …