Introduction

We are now approaching four decades since AIDS was first reported from Africa and yet, notwithstanding tremendous progress during the last decade, we are far from containing the pandemic caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In 2010, an estimated 68% of all people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and 70% of all new infections were in Sub-Saharan Africa (UNAIDS 2011, p. 7). Even though 22 countries in this region reported declines in HIV incidence of 25% or more and 20% fewer people died in 2009 than in 2001, the total number of PLWHA in Sub-Saharan Africa increased by 2.2 million during that period, 1.5 million of which lived in southern Africa, the most highly affected region. South Africa, the country with the largest epidemic worldwide, reported 220,000 AIDS-related deaths in 2001 and 310,000 in 2009; 15 other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa reported smaller increases in mortality although a downward trend appeared in the region after 2004 as a result of intensified interventions (UNAIDS 2010, pp. 16, 180, 185). AIDS continues to severely impact households, communities, businesses, public services, and national economies in the Sub-Saharan African region and local, national, and international stakeholders searching for new, effective, and sustainable ways to contain the epidemic.