NOTE TO CORRESPONDENTS WORLD AIDS DAY TO BE OBSERVED AT HEADQUARTERS

Press Release

NOTE TO CORRESPONDENTS WORLD AIDS DAY TO BE OBSERVED AT HEADQUARTERS

World AIDS Day will be observed at Headquarters on 2 December. Under the auspices of the President of the fifty-first General Assembly and co- sponsored by the Department of Public Information (DPI), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), the observance will begin at 3 p.m. in the General Assembly Hall.

This year's theme for World AIDS Day is "One world. One hope". The Assembly President will preside over the meeting and deliver his message for the day. The Secretary-General will also deliver his annual World AIDS Day message.

Actress Elizabeth Taylor and television personality Cristina Saralegui will participate in the event. Other speakers include Martina Clark, NGO/People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) Liaison Officer, UNAIDS; Noerine Kaleeba, Community Mobilization Adviser, UNAIDS; and Marina Mahathir, President, Malaysian AIDS Council and Chairman, Malaysian AIDS Foundation.

Elizabeth Taylor has been a dedicated AIDS activist since 1984. She is the Founding National Chairman of AmFAR, which has been funding AIDS research, education and public policy projects since 1985. In 1991 she established the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF), dedicated to funding organizations that provide direct assistance to people living with HIV/AIDS. Ms. Taylor's AIDS-related efforts have earned her both a French Legion d'honneur award and a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

Cristina Saralegui's talk show, El Show de Cristina, shown on the Univision network, reaches an estimated 100 million viewers in 18 countries. Ms. Saralegui has made AIDS a primary topic of her show as well as of her monthly magazine, Cristina la Revista. She is a National Council Member of AmFAR and its Ambassador to the Latino Community, and has been honoured by that organization with an Award of Distinction for Leadership in Communications and Broadcasting.

Martina Clark was the key contact for North America of the International Community of Women Living with AIDS (ICW) and a NGO/PLHA representative to the

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UNAIDS Coordinating Board before joining UNAIDS as its NGO/PLHA Liaison Officer earlier this year. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Board Member for North America of the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GNP+) as well as Secretary to the Board of Directors and Assistant to the Executive Director of WORLD, an association of women responding to life-threatening diseases, in Oakland, California. Ms. Clark is HIV-positive.

Noerine Kaleeba, Community Mobilization Adviser for UNAIDS, has been an AIDS activist for nearly a decade. She founded the AIDS Support Organization (TASO) in Uganda in 1987; TASO offers counselling to people with HIV/AIDS, and also works with governmental and non-governmental organizations to combat the spread of AIDS. Ms. Kaleeba has also assisted in the development of national HIV/AIDS programmes, including those funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Marina Mahathir was appointed Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Malaysian AIDS Foundation in 1993; the following year she was elected President of the Malaysian AIDS Council, an umbrella organization of 28 non- governmental organizations working with HIV/AIDS in Malaysia. Ms. Mahathir was a delegate to the NGO Forum at the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) where she conducted a workshop on AIDS and the Asian Woman, and has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNAIDS.

World AIDS Day was established on 1 December 1988 by THE WHO, and its annual observance is mandated by General Assembly resolution 43/15.

For more information, contact Graciela Hall at (212) 963-6923; for media accreditation, (212) 963-6934; for United Nations television coverage, Jim Ludlam, (212) 963-7650.

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