UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years58and the various agencies such as the State Department and the US Agency for InternationalDevelopment to develop models [measuring the impact of the epidemic on populations].The HIV/AIDS Surveillance Database continued to grow and it was a major source of informationfor evaluating the trends and patterns of the HIV epidemics”. UNAIDS certainly didnot want to duplicate this work, rather, it wished to build a relationship with the US CensusBureau and others to help them measure the epidemic.Partnership was always crucial to UNAIDS’ epidemiological work, stressed BernhardSchwartländer, an epidemiologist and Head of the German National AIDS Programme,who joined UNAIDS as Chief Epidemiologist in October 1996. He recalled: “… very enthusiastic,committed, skilled people who were driven by a sense of urgency, by a sense of weneed to get things done”. He brought together all the key players to agree on the best wayof cooperating on tracking the epidemic and making estimates for the future.“There was a concerted effort to involve everybody who had any modelling experience orknowledge of the dynamics of the HIV epidemic to best estimate at the country level whatwas happening in terms of HIV prevalence”, explained Stanecki.In November 1996, the UNAIDS/WHO Working Group on Global HIV/AIDS and STISurveillance was initiated, the main coordination and implementation mechanism for thetwo organizations to compile the best information available and to improve the quality ofdata needed for informed decision making and planning at all levels.Vancouver: breaking the communications barrier11th International AIDSConference logoInternational AIDS SocietyDuring the first few months of 1996, Anne Winter,then UNAIDS Communications Chief, and her smallcommunications team battled to raise the profileof both the epidemic and the efforts of UNAIDS torespond to it. It was not easy for people to graspthe nature of something as novel as a cosponsoredprogramme. Nor was it a straightforward task, thoughcentral to the organization’s mandate, to raise publicawareness of the AIDS epidemic and its disastrousimpact in the developing world.New ways of thinking were also needed in-houseas UNAIDS’ staff came mainly from technical backgroundswith little direct experience of communications.Media requests were handled through formalclearance processes and there were few proactive