The Accelerating Access Initiative (AAI) is a cooperative endeavor of UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the UN Population Fund, the World Bank, and seven research-based pharmaceutical companies (Abbott Laboratories, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Gilead Sciences, Merck & Co., Inc. and F. Hoffmann–La Roche). Participants in AAI are committed to working with governments, international organizations, and other stakeholders to find ways to broaden access while ensuring rational, affordable, safe and effective use of drugs for HIV/AIDS-related illnesses. While it is widely recognized that affordability is just one of the many issues to access, the companies, individually, have offered to substantially improve access to, and the availability of, a range of medicines by providing more affordable prices in developing countries. These efforts are bearing fruit. More than 80 countries have signaled to the UN agencies that they plan to implement HIV treatment programs and wish to collaborate with the AAI. Of these countries, 49 already have national plans in place and have reached agreement on prices with the individual companies concerned. By June 2003, the number of people in Africa receiving treatment under the AAI was eight times higher than when the program began in 2000 and stood at roughly 75,000. By March 2005 the number of treatments delivered by the AAI in Africa reached more than 427,000 patients.