Community engagement in HIV prevention in Asia: going from ‘for the community’ to ‘by the community’—must we wait for more evidence?

for humanitarian reasons in the first place, but perhaps also because of their theoretical potential to reduce infectiousness at the population level, making sex workers and other high-risk communities a priority for antiretroviral treatment access on epidemiological grounds. In this time of global financial and economic crisis, one of the strongest messages coming out of Avahan is that not focussing HIV prevention programmes where HIV is primarily spreading, and not investing in solid multi-prong monitoring and evaluation, are no longer acceptable. In that sense as well, Avahan has set new standards for HIV prevention.