The immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS) has emerged as an important early complication of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in resource-limited settings, especially in patients with tuberculosis. However, there are no consensus case definitions for IRIS or tuberculosisassociated IRIS. Moreover, previously proposed case definitions are not readily applicable in settings where laboratory resources are limited. As a result, existing studies on tuberculosisassociated IRIS have used a variety of non-standardised general case definitions. To rectify this problem, around 100 researchers, including microbiologists, immunologists, clinicians, epidemiologists, clinical trialists, and public-health specialists from 16 countries met in Kampala, Uganda, in November, 2006. At this meeting, consensus case definitions for paradoxical tuberculosis-associated IRIS, ART-associated tuberculosis, and unmasking tuberculosis-associated IRIS were derived, which can be used in high-income and resource-limited settings. It is

Two-thirds of the world's HIV-infected people live in sub-Saharan Africa and more than 1.5 million of them die annually. As access to antiretroviral treatment (ART) has expanded within the region, early pessimism concerning the delivery of ART using a large-scale public health approach has, at least in the short term, proved to be broadly unfounded. Immunological and virological responses to ART are similar to responses in patients treated in high-income countries. Despite this, however, early mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa are very high; between 8% and 26% of patients die in the first year of ART, with most deaths occurring in the first few months. Patients typically access ART with advanced symptomatic disease, and mortality is strongly associated with baseline CD4 cell count <50 cells/μL and WHO stage 4 disease (AIDS). Although data are limited, leading causes of death appear to be tuberculosis, acute sepsis, cryptococcal meningitis, malignancy and wasting syndrome. Mortality rates are likely to depend not only on the care delivered by ART programmes, but more fundamentally on how advanced disease is at programme enrolment and the quality of preceding health-care. In addition to improving delivery of ART and providing this free of charge to the patient, strategies to reduce mortality must include earlier diagnosis of HIV infection, strengthening of longitudinal HIV care and timely initiation of ART. Health systems delays in ART initiation must be minimised, especially in patients who present with advanced immunodeficiency.