Although much progress against the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been made, the level of new HIV infections remains substantial, and the majority of these new infections continue to occur in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2009, an estimated 2.6 million new HIV infections were recorded worldwide, with nearly 70 percent of these occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. The pace of the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa has slowed, however: between 2001 and 2009, the number of new infections in sub-Saharan Africa decreased from 2.2 million to 1.8 million. The recent Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS adopted by the United Nations program on AIDS (UNAIDS) General Assembly on 10 June 2011 renewed member countries’ commitment to avert new HIV infections through focused prevention efforts, including eliminating HIV infections transmitted vertically, and to increase the number of people on anti-retroviral therapy to 15 million by 2015 (UNAIDS 2011).

The continued need for both prevention and treatment funding for HIV/AIDS is combined with stagnant or even diminishing financial resources. Although funding has increased substantially in the last decade, spending remained approximately the same between 2008 and 2009, only increasing from $15.6 billion to $15.9 billion. Because the funding need increased over that year, the funding gap increased from $7.7 billion in 2008 to $10 billion in 2009 (UNAIDS 2010). The question asked by RethinkHIV is thus particularly relevant at this juncture: how can an additional $10 billion be spent over the next five years to fight HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa?