Johannesburg — TEN years ago I was in Durban to attend the International AIDS Conference. Many things about that conference I will never forget, but three moments in particular I remember vividly.

When Nkosi Johnson spoke at the opening ceremony, I stood up with everybody else to applaud his courage. When Justice Edwin Cameron urged us "to make the future different", I knew the future of the response to AIDS was about to change. And when then-president Nelson Mandela said that something needed to "be done as a matter of the greatest urgency", I surely was only one of thousands of people who resolved to fight even harder.

At the time, the world was failing to respond to AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in developing countries, causing an unprecedented public health and human rights crisis. Effective HIV treatment had been available in high-income countries since 1996, but remained unavailable to nearly everyone in need elsewhere.

The Durban conference was a watershed event, thanks to the determination of South African activists. Only 18 months later, in January 2002, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was established to answer the emergency and vastly accelerate the response to the three diseases.

In the fund's 2010 Results Report, we describe what we have achieved. I wanted to launch the report in SA because the effect of the three pandemics has been particularly devastating in Africa, but also because here we have achieved some of the most impressive results. Since 2002, the fund has approved grants totalling 19,2bn, making it the main multilateral contributor to the health-related Millennium Development Goals. Our programmes have saved at least 4,9-million lives in the past six years. Every day, 3600 lives are saved.

At the end of December, Global Fund programmes were providing antiretrovirals to 2,5-million people. Last year 340 000 pregnant women received treatment to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child through Global Fund grants. Since 2004 we have provided treatment to 6-million people with active TB and distributed 104-million insecticide- treated nets to prevent malaria.

As a result of our efforts and those of our partners, AIDS mortality has fallen in many high-burden countries, and the number of new HIV infections is stabilising and decreasing throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Countries in Africa are reporting declines in new malaria cases and in child mortality of 50%-80%. Prevalence of TB is also declining worldwide.

This will be a decisive year; the world will be reviewing progress on the millennium goals. But this is also the year of the fund's replenishment. The results of that will decide where the world will be in 2015 with regard to the millennium goals. If we continue to scale up rapidly, we could reach them: malaria may be eliminated as a public health problem in most endemic countries; millions more HIV infections may be prevented; the growing threat of multidrug-resistant TB may be contained; and we may virtually eliminate transmission of HIV from mother to child.

We have to do this. In Africa last year 400 000 babies were born with HIV - a moral outrage and a human rights disaster. We know how to prevent these transmissions, and we can and must do this everywhere.

Ten years after the Durban conference, let us not forget its activist spirit. Let us not forget that even today, despite the progress made, only half of the people in urgent need have access to life- saving treatment. Let us celebrate what we have achieved, and resolve not to slow down our efforts now.

Kazatchkine is the executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.