In partnership with Google and YouTube, the initiative will see campaign envoys taking up positions on the corner of strategic Manhattan road intersections holding signs with compelling HIV facts and urging that we free future generations from HIV by 2015.

Designed to look like a mock road sign and intended to trigger a double-take, each of the 20 different signs contain a key statistic that is specifically linked to each unique location.

The initiative is timed to coincide with the UN General Assembly gathering and the Millennium Development Goals summit taking place in New York this week to assess progress on meeting mankind’s most vital needs.  With the fight against AIDS and HIV at a crossroads, the Born HIV Free Crossroads initiative sign posts the way ahead for world leaders.

It is intended that the signs will be seen at multiple locations by delegates as they criss-cross the city between hotel, summit and meetings.  The signs are designed to draw attention to how close the world is to the major international health breakthrough of the virtual elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. A fully financed Global Fund will help deliver it in just five years.

But you don’t need to be on the ground to track the crossroads. Google will be mapping the event and you can see the locations, texts and more about the campaign at an address to be launched soon.

The Global Fund is the world’s largest financier of programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. On 4-5 October donors and stakeholders will meet in New York to pledge their contributions for the next three years of The Global Fund’s work. This will have an enormous bearing on the future fight against HIV and AIDS.

So far, more than 15 million people have engaged with the Born HIV Free campaign, initiated and supported by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, to show their support for the Global Fund and a world where no child is born with HIV.

The Born HIV Free Crossroads initiative is made possible thanks to YouTube, with Johannes Leonardo working for Google on implementing it.

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The Global Fund is a unique global public/private partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing additional resources to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. This partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities represents a new approach to international health financing. The Global Fund works in close collaboration with other bilateral and multilateral organizations to supplement existing efforts dealing with the three diseases.

Since its creation in 2002, the Global Fund has become the main source of finance for programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, with approved funding of US$ 19.4 billion for more than 600 programs in 144 countries. It provides a fifth of all international financing for AIDS globally, two-thirds for tuberculosis and two thirds for malaria.

Global Fund financing is enabling countries to strengthen health systems by, for example, making improvements to infrastructure and providing training to those who deliver services. The Global Fund remains committed to working in partnership to scale up the fight against the diseases and to realize its vision – a world free of the burden of AIDS, TB and malaria.