The [him] moderator has had an opportunity to examine the HIV Sentinel Serosurveillance Survey 2007 jointly published by the NAP and WHO.

The report notes that: "Understanding the differences in recruitment and execution of the sampling method for HSS in different years is critical to understanding and interpreting these trends." That is true. But the report does not give enough information on these differences for most readers to make any clear decisions on programme outcomes. For instance, how were women sex workers sampled? Was the sampling method the same in all sites? Was the sampling method changed in Yangon and Mandalay, the only two sites where previous data was available?

We can conclude that there continues to be a serious HIV problem among injecting drug users and men who have sex with men and probably women sex workers. If sentinel surveillance continues to produce low quality data it is going to be difficult to demonstrate the outcome of the national response.

[him] moderator