The world must take urgent account of the specific impact of AIDS on children, or there will be no chance of meeting Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 6 - to halt and begin to reverse the spread of the disease by 2015. Failure to meet the goal on HIV/AIDS will adversely affect the world's chances of progress on the other MDGs. The disease continues to frustrate efforts to reduce extreme poverty and hunger, to provide universal primary education, and to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health. World leaders, from both industrialized and developing countries, have repeatedly made commitments to step up their efforts to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS. They are beginning to increase the political leadership and the resources needed to fight the disease. Significant progress is being made in charting the past and future course of the pandemic, in providing free antiretroviral treatment to those who need it, and in expanding the coverage of prevention services. But children are still missing out.