UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years48In Thailand as in manycountries across the world,religious fi gures play a keyrole in the responseto AIDS.UNAIDS/Shehzad NooraniAs the number of cases of HIV continued to rise, there was a real sense of urgency at UNAIDS.It now had staff, a budget and a strategic plan. The groundwork had been laid in the previousmonths – including long days in Geneva and meetings in every region of the world. The pacewould not slacken.Political advocacy was high on UNAIDS’ list of priorities. By June 1996, UNAIDS staff hadmet with political, economic and social leaders in more than 50 countries to brief them onUNAIDS’ mandate and work. Sally Cowal, Director of External Relations at UNAIDS, was newto the ‘AIDS world’. “At first I had doubts [about not having a medical background] but as Icame to understand more about the epidemic, it became clear to me that the political motivationaround it, the need to overcome denial and complacency, were probably as importantas anything we could do”.“The biggest challenge was waking up the leaders,” said Rob Moodie, first Director ofUNAIDS’ Country Support department. “It’s not just the leaders but their key ministers, thentheir key bureaucrats”.It was useful that Peter Piot, UNAIDS Executive Director, and Cowal had quite different setsof contacts and networks. “It was serendipitous at times”, she remarked. “Peter had respectin the medical community for his early work. And then he had in his work with the GlobalProgramme, and before, established awfully good connections in a lot of the activists’ organizations.I had mostly US political connections through having been an Assistant Secretaryof State and an ambassador … so I was able to pull those in. The Secretary of Health andHuman Services was Donna Shalala at that time, she was one of my best buddies, we wenttrekking every summer. That is how we met Madeleine Albright [US Secretary of State] andRichard Holbrooke [UN Ambassador]”.