A senior UN official on Thursday urged African countries to stay focused in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

Girmay Haile, the UNAIDS Country Director for Ghana, said presently HIV response in Africa was directly being affected by conflict, stigma, discrimination, the changing global environment including the current economic crisis, and insufficient domestic resources to bridge the financial gap and sustain the response.

However, he said all these challenges, while directly impacting on the response, also presented opportunities to galvanize leadership and ownership on HIV and demonstrate why it mattered for African countries to stay focused.

He was speaking at a press conference to launch the 17th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA), Africa's largest AIDS conference, which will be held in Cape Town South Africa from December 7 to 11, this year.

The ICASA, which is under the theme: "Now More than Ever: Targeting Zero", is a platform that brings health systems, experts, researchers as well as People Living with HIV and other stakeholders closer together to deliberate on key concerns to the HIV epidemic that have seriously affected the continent.

Girmay said the theme for the conference meant it was not time now to let go and not yet time to relax, adding that HIV infection had already demonstrated that it could easily turn into a rapid epidemic if it was not checked and prevented.

He said all gains in the fight of the disease could easily be lost and society could be endangered all over again if Africans did not sustain and consolidate the gains.

"We have reached a point in Africa today where we can say we are emboldened enough to 'End the epidemic, zero down to zero' because the end of the epidemic is in sight," he said.

Since its inception, ICASA has highlighted the need to foster active and sustainable engagements by leaders from all sectors and at all levels, as well as the need to mobilize leadership to reduce the impact of HIV and AIDS in Africa and around the world.

Girmay said the scientific world had presented the continent with sound treatment applications and much of the success so far could be attributed to the fact that these had worked, coupled with rapid increase of people infected with HIV being put on treatment.

He said while the health sector response to HIV seemed to be delivering, the continent was still lagging behind in terms of reduction of stigma, discrimination and harmful traditional practices.

"Unless societies and countries on the continent come to terms with the real facts of life and the available scientific evidence, we will not achieve further progress in the response and even face dangers of a roll back of the epidemic." he emphasized.

He urged African governments to think together on how best they could address issues of populations who were at high-risk while targeting zero new infections, zero deaths due to AIDS and zero discrimination and stigma against PLHIV.

The Society for AIDS in Africa (SAA) is the custodian and convener of ICASA.

The Director General of the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC) Dr Angela El-Adas said Ghana saw its collaboration with the SAA as essential towards the eventual elimination of HIV and AIDS.

She said the theme resonated with Ghana's sub theme for the year: "Accelerating to Zero Together."

"We believe that all hands must be on deck to realize the dream of an HIV free generation and to achieve health related MDGs by 2015," she said.

The South African High Commission to Ghana, Madam Jeanette Ndhlovu, said collectively Africa could win the war against HIV and AIDS.

"If we can defeat apartheid, which some people said we couldn't, we can defeat the scourge of HIV and AIDS in Africa," she said.

The first ICASA conference was convened in Brussels, Belgium, in 1986. It has subsequently provided diverse opportunities to governments, civil society and development partners to strengthen responses to the HIV pandemic.